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BEING A CHRISTIAN 



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BEING A CHRISTIAN 



WHAT IT MEANS 
AND HOW TO BEGIN 



BY 

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 




THE PILGRIM PRESS 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 






<;^ 



Copyright, igio 
By Luther H. Cary 



THE • PlIMPTON . PRESS 

[ W . D . O] 
NORWOOD . MASS . U • S • A 



CCI.A2786S2 



1 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 

I 
;^/TpHIS little book will fall, I trust, into 

r^JL the hands of many who are not 
^ Christians. Some of them are not Chris- 
tians simply because they do not want to 
be. They are not willing to give up their 
sins and devote themselves to the unselfish 
service of Christ. But others of them do 
want to be Christians, only they do not 
know how to begin. Again and again they 
have tried to begin, and have always failed. 
They have heard that they must give their 
hearts to Christ, if they would be Christians; 
and they have knelt more than once, in 
secret, and said, just as honestly as they 
could, — 

"Here, Lord, I give myself away, 
'Tis all that I can do," — 

waiting, then, for a light to shine down upon 
them, or for a burden to roll off, or for a 
flood of joy to fill their souls. Because 
nothing of the sort has ever happened to 
them, they have always sadly concluded 
that their consecration, was not rightly 
made, that for some inscrutable reason 
[v] 



PREFACE 



God was not pleased to accept them; and 
their efforts to lead a Christian life have 
therefore been abandoned as often as they 
have been made. 

Every faithful pastor knows that in all 
our congregations there are many such per- 
plexed and discouraged seekers. These plain 
conversations are intended for them. No 
one will be made willing to be a Christian 
by reading this little book; but I hope that 
it may help those who are willing in finding 
the right way. 



[vi] 



PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION 

IT IS almost thirty-five years since this 
Httle book went forth on its humble 
mission. It has been kindly welcomed by 
many pastors, who have used it in their 
ministry; it has brought me many grateful 
letters from men and women, old and young, 
who have thought that it helped them to 
find the way of life. 

I have taken advantage of the reprinting 
of the book to give it a careful revision, 
making some changes which will not affect 
its essential meaning, but which will, I trust, 
render it more useful. 

W. G. 

Columbus, Ohio, July 25, 1910. 



[vii] 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I What Is It to Be a Christian? i 

II Why Should I Be a Christian? 23 

III How Shall I Become a Christian? .... 43 

IV How Shall I Know Whether I am a Christian, 

or Not? 65 

V When Should I Join the Church? .... 87 

VI But and If 105 



[ix] 



TO 



WHAT IS IT 
BE A CHRISTIAN? 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 



WHAT IS IT TO BE A CHRISTIAN? 

THE ritualist is ready with his answer. 
^'It is to be a member of the Christian 
Church," he tells you. "All who have been 
baptized with water in the name of the 
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are 
Christians." 

In a certain formal sense this is true. All 
foreigners who have been naturalized are, 
before the law, Americans; and all human 
beings who have received baptism are, 
nominally at least, Christians. Baptism is 
the rite by which we are admitted to the 
visible Church, and those who have been 
baptized are members of the Church. 

But we who have always lived in America 
are inclined to think that the simple act of 
taking out his naturalization papers will not 
make any man a good American. No man 
worthily bears that name, we say, who does 
not know something of the principles upon 
which this nation is founded, and who does 
not heartily devote himself to the main- 

[3] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

tenance of these principles in public and in 
private life. True Americans are not made 
by a process of law: it is by their sympathies, 
their choices, their heroic labors and sacri- 
fices in behalf of their country that they 
come to deserve the name. Just so the 
genuine Christian regards the mere act of 
baptism as giving one but a poor title to 
the Christian name. Paul said that the man 
was not a Jew who was one outwardly; that 
the mere rite of circumcision was nothing; 
that he was only a Jew who was one inwardly; 
and that the genuine circumcision was of 
the heart, in the spirit and not in the letter. 
If Paul could say that about the Jewish 
Church, which was avowedly a ritualistic 
organization, surely it is safe to say the same 
thing about the Christian Church, which 
differs from the Jewish Church mainly in 
caring less for things ceremonial, and more 
for things spiritual; less for rites, and more 
for realities. 

The definition of the ritualist, then, will 
never do. It describes the form of Chris- 
tianity but does not touch its substance. 
To say that a Christian is a person who has 
been baptized, is much the same as to say 
that a scholar is one who has received a 

[4] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

diploma, or that a hero is a man who wears 
a blue uniform. 

When the rituahst is done, up speaks the 
dogmatist. ''To be a Christian," he says, 
*'is to hold correct views of the plan of sal- 
vation. It is to have a realizing sense of the 
truth of certain sound doctrines concerning 
sin and the atonement.'' Faith, the dogma- 
tist argues, is the condition of salvation: 
and faith, in his understanding of it, is a 
vivid perception of truth. 

But faith, in this sense of the word, makes 
nobody a Christian. The devils are dogma- 
tists. They also believe, after this fashion. 
They have a vivid perception of the truths 
against which they are all the while fighting. 
It is of great importance that we under- 
stand and believe the truth which relates 
to Christ and his kingdom; but the most 
unhesitating assent of the intellect to the 
whole of Hodge's "Theology," or to all of 
Watson's "Institutes," will make no man a 
Christian. 

The sentimentalist also has his answer to 
our question. ''To be a Christian," he says, 
^'is to have certain delightful feielings of 
peace and joy and love. The impenitent 
person is one who feels that he is estranged 

[5] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

from God: the Christian is one who feels 
that he is reconciled to God." 

But our feelings, as everybody knows, are 
uncertain and even delusive guides. It is a 
notorious fact that men often mistake the 
complacency which waits on good digestion 
for peace of conscience, and the excitement 
aroused by a dramatic appeal for joy in the 
Holy Ghost. Moreover, feeling is not the 
whole of life: when it serves its purpose, it 
is the glowing link which binds together 
thought and action. A feeling which origi- 
nates in no definite thought, and results in 
no definite action, is good for nothing. Emo- 
tion for its own sake is poor stuff. Yet this is 
what the sentimentalist looks for and labors 
to secure. When he has produced in him- 
self or in others certain pleasurable states of 
feeling, his work is accomplished. 

The ritualist, the dogmatist, and the sen- 
timentalist represent three distinct classes 
of persons in every Christian community. 
Many of them are good Christians in prac- 
tise, but their theories are unsound. Their 
lives are better than their ideas. It is only 
when they try to tell what it is to be a 
Christian, that they make mistakes; and 
those who seek to become Christians need 
[6] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

to be put on their guard against these mis- 
taken theories. 

To be a Christian is something more than 
to submit to certain rites, or to believe cer- 
tain doctrines, or to experience certain emo- 
tions. What is it, then.^ 

To begin with, it seems clear that it must 
have something to do with Christ. ^^Chris- 
tian" means, literally, pertaining or belong- 
ing to Christ. When the word is applied 
to a man, it can only describe his personal 
relation to Jesus Christ; and it must mean 
that this relation is one of attachment and 
confidence. 

To be a Christian^ then, is, in the first place, 
to believe on Jesus Christ. 

What is meant by believing on him.'^ It is 
something more than believing in him — 
believing that there was such a person; few 
people are in doubt about that. We shall 
make a good beginning if we drop the 
preposition and simply believe him. This, 
I suppose, is the way the first disciples 
began. They heard him speaking, and they 
believed him; his words carried conviction. 
He told them about God — that he was their 
Father — and they believed him. He told 
them that all men were their brothers and 

[7] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

they believed him. He told them about 
life and duty, about the meaning of the 
commandments, about sin and its conse- 
quences, about the kingdom of God — that 
it was not coming by and by, but that it 
was here already, demanding the allegiance 
of every human being — and they believed 
what he said. Whether what we call the 
Sermon on the Mount was all preached at 
one time and place we do not know; but some 
such teaching as this, we may be sure, was 
always falling from the lips of Jesus in the 
early days of his ministry; and the men who 
accepted it became his disciples. It was 
what he said to them that convinced them 
and drew them to him. The name by which 
they always addressed him was Master, 
that is. Teacher. Paul got acquainted with 
him in another way, but Paul indicates that 
his discipleship began by believing Jesus, 
rather than by believing things about him; 
for he says, "I know Him whom [not in 
whom] I have believed.'^ '^I believed 
hinty^^ he seems to say, "and in that way I 
came to know him.'' Of course Paul be- 
lieved him in just the same way that we 
do; he had in his hands the memoranda of 
the things that Jesus had said, and they 
[8] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

convinced his reason; he believed that they 
were true. The fact that the life of Jesus 
was in perfect harmony with his words 
added conviction; but it was in the words 
that the vital truth was conveyed from the 
mind of Jesus to the minds of his disciples. 
They began by believing him, and by prov- 
ing that what he said was true, and so they 
came to believe in him, as a character, as a 
personality; to trust him; to be ready to 
commit their lives to him. Mr. Gilder's 
"Song of a Heathen," sojourning in Galilee, 
A.D. 32, could have been sung, no doubt, by 
some Jews living there at that day: 

"If Jesus Christ is a man — 
And only a man — I say 
That of all mankind I cleave to him, 
And to him will I cleave alway. 

"If Jesus Christ is a God, — 
And the only God, — I swear 
I will follow him through Heaven and Hell, 
The earth, the sea, and the air." 

It is plain that there can be no better way 
for us to begin the Christian life than the way 
that these first disciples followed. Here are 
Christ's words. Do we believe them.^ It 
is quite worth while to settle that matter 
first of all. Jesus said that his words are 

[9] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

spirit and life; that they are the words of God 
and that those who hold fast to his teaching 
are truly his disciples. Any one who wishes 
to know what the Christian life is, can surely 
find no more authoritative statement than 
that which is contained in the words of the 
Master himself. None of them can be 
neglected; but one who wishes to apply to 
himself this test will do well to read care- 
fully the fifth, sixth, seventh, and thirteenth 
chapters of Matthew^s Gospel, the eighth 
chapter of Mark, the tenth, the fifteenth, 
and the eighteenth chapters of Luke, and the 
fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seven- 
teenth chapters of John. One ought to 
read these chapters remembering what Jesus 
said, that the Spirit of truth is always ready 
to help us to understand the words which 
he has spoken, and keeping the mind open 
for that divine illumination. So reading, the 
way of Jesus will be made so plain that we 
shall be able to judge whether we want to 
walk in it. 

It is a matter on which, before we start, 
we need to have clear ideas. It is idle for 
any man to claim to be a Christian if he 
does not believe what Jesus has said about 
the way of life. Yet it is to be feared that 

[10] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

multitudes enter the churches without ever 
giving this matter any consideration; with- 
out asking themselves whether or not the 
life which Jesus describes in the Gospels is 
the life they desire to live. Make no mistake 
here. You can understand the words of 
this Teacher. Settle it in your minds whether 
you believe what he has said about God and 
man, about life and death, about love and 
service. 

One who believes him will find it natural 
to believe on him. Such a revelation as he 
has made to us of the deep things of God 
draws out our confidence; we are ready to 
say what was said by those who first listened 
to him, that he speaks with authority; we 
are ready to intrust our lives to him; to make 
him our Captain and our King. 

The man who thus believes on Christ will 
also be a disciple of Christ. The Christians 
of the early days were often called disciples. 
A disciple is a learner. Christ was a learner 
while he was on the earth; and he who has 
the mind of Christ will surely have a docile 
temper. He will not imagine that he knows 
everything; and to Christ, who is his Teacher, 
he will constantly go for instruction in truth 
and in duty. The words that his Master 

[II] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

spoke are written in the New Testament, and 
he will search those parables and conver- 
sations for hidden treasures of wisdom. 
Christ's Word is law to him ; when the Lord 
speaks, there is no more controversy. 

And not only in the words of Christ does 
he find instruction, but in his acts as well. 
The Saviour's deeds were sermons not less 
than his words. The parables are miracles 
of speech, and the miracles are parables in 
act. By the Word of God all things were 
made; and the Word that works in multiply- 
ing the loaves, and in healing the lepers, is 
one with the Word that speaks from the 
Mount of the Beatitudes. 

And not only in the record of the Saviour's 
life does the disciple look for the truth that 
he needs to know. Christ promised, when 
he went away, that he would come again as 
the Spirit of Truth, and abide with his 
disciples, communicating directly to them 
enlightenment and wisdom. The Christian 
holds loving intercourse every day with the 
Spirit of the Lord. He believes that the 
same Spirit who was manifested to the world 
in the life of Jesus Christ is with us every 
day as the great Companion and Comrade: 

" Closer is He than breathing and nearer than hands or feet." 
[12] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

If there are questions of duty that he cannot 
solve, he asks for light, and is often sure 
that he receives it. He remembers that 
obedience is the condition of knowledge; that 
only those are certain to know of the doctrine 
who are prompt to do the Master's will; 
and therefore he is careful always to be 
walking in the way of duty when he asks 
for light. But obedience is the only con- 
dition; and when it is supplied he knows 
that the divine Teacher is ready to impart 
to every trusting disciple the wisdom that is 
profitable to direct him, and the truth that 
will make him free. 

The man who believes on Christ will also be 
a follower of Christ. He will not only be 
joined to Christ by a personal trust that 
identifies him with his Master; he will not 
only sit at the Saviour's feet as his disciple, 
and learn of him what is truth and what is 
duty: he will also arise and follow Christ as 
his leader in the ways of fidelity and of 
sacrifice. He is not content with feeling as 
Christ felt and with thinking as Christ 
thought: he wishes also to live as Christ 
lived. This, indeed, is the grand result of 
his belief and his discipleship. He trusts in 
Christ, and learns of him, in order that he 

[13] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

may be able to follow him. It is not merely 
in view of death, or of what comes after 
death, that he betakes himself to the Sa- 
viour; it is in view of life, of its duties, its 
hardships, its temptations. The man who is 
a Christian merely that he may die securely 
and happily is a poor sort of Christian. He 
does not know the meaning of trust or of 
discipleship. 

There are two paths in which the Christian 
follows Christ in this world, — paths which 
are always parallel, and which often merge 
into one, — the path of integrity, and the 
path of benevolence. In doing right and in 
doing good the Christian is a follower of 
Christ. 

The righteousness of Christ is to the Chris- 
tian not merely a shelter behind which he 
hides: it is an example which he imitates, 
and a living principle which by faith he 
makes his own. His own conscience tells 
him of a perfect truth, a perfect purity, a 
perfect goodness, which he ought to possess. 
He knows that these virtues are the most 
excellent possessions on earth, and he desires 
them above all things. In Christ he sees 
them incarnated and exemplified; and he 
therefore desires to follow in His steps who 

[14] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

"did no sin, neither was guile found in his 
mouth." 

The fact that Christianity means right 
conduct, aims at that, leads to that, results 
in that, is a fact of which scarcely enough 
account has been made, and which needs, 
especially in these days, to be made emphatic 
in any account of what Christianity is. 
Every one who thinks of becoming a Chris- 
tian ought to understand at the outset that 
being a Christian means telling the truth, 
dealing honestly in trade, governing the 
temper, sealing the lips against slander, keep- 
ing the mind free from evil thoughts and 
the life from unclean deeds; that he who 
has in him the good hope of salvation 
through Christ purifies himself even as 
Christ is pure. His name is called Jesus 
because he saves his people from their sins. 
He is not a Saviour to any man whom he 
does not save from sin. Any man who 
thinks he is a Christian, and who yet does 
wrong deliberately and persistently, deceives 
himself. He is not a Christian. The Chris- 
tian may be overtaken in a fault; but when 
his fault is made plain to him he will repent 
of it and forsake it, making what repara- 
tion is in his power. But one who knowingly 

[IS] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

chooses to walk in the ways of sin, and 
who either brazenly justifies his iniquity, 
or falsely seeks to conceal it, has no reason 
to think that he is a Christian at all. 

The man who goes to the bank, and tells 
the cashier that his assets are twenty thou- 
sand dollars when he knows that they are not 
really five thousand, and that his liabilities 
are five thousand dollars when he knows that 
they are twenty thousand, and who gets a 
note discounted there on the strength of the 
statement, and goes off with the money, and 
presently fails, paying twenty-five cents on 
the dollar, and never afterward repenting of 
his sin, or trying to restore the money of 
which he has plundered the bank, is not 
a Christian. No man who walks in that 
crooked road can be said to be a follower 
of Christ. 

The man who contracts to build a house 
for you of sound and well-seasoned material, 
in a workmanlike manner, and then slips in 
timbers that he knows will shrink and crack 
your walls; and water-pipes that he knows 
will burst and flood your ceilings, — the 
man who habitually practises dishonesty of 
this sort is not a Christian. The man who 
sells you food, with the understanding that it 
[i6] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

is pure, when he knows it to be adulterated, 
who makes this the method of his business, 
is not a Christian. The woman who is 
addicted to putting in circulation or keeping 
in circulation evil tales which she does not 
know to be true is not a Christian. Bear- 
ing false witness against your neighbors is 
not following Christ. 

I do not mean that no one is a Christian 
who ever commits sins of this nature; the 
best Christians, I repeat, are sometimes led 
into temptation: but in sitting at Christ's 
feet, and learning of him, they are sure to be 
convinced of their sins, and then they make 
haste to repent of them, and forsake them. 
The deliberate and habitual practise of any 
form of dishonesty or immorality is impossible 
to one who follows Christ. 

But the Christian is not satisfied with 
merely keeping to the right, with giving 
to all their just dues. Christ went a great 
deal further than that, and so must the man 
who follows him. If the Lord from heaven 
had been content with giving to all of us 
our just dues, it would not have been so 
well with us as it is to-day. He not only 
does justly: he loves mercy; and so shall 
we if we learn of him and follow him. 

[17] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

To do good to all men as we have oppor- 
tunity; to do good to those who have no 
claim upon us but the claim of human 
brotherhood; to show kindness to the un- 
thankful and the evil, — this is part of what 
is meant by following Jesus Christ. He 
went about doing good; and those who follow 
him must walk in the same ways of benefi- 
cence. Mrs. Barbauld's hymn tells us how 
the Christian feels and acts in the midst 
of the sorrow and suffering that fill the 
world : 

"Blest IS the man whose softening heart 
Feels all another's pain; 
To whom the supplicating eye 
Was never raised in vain; 

"Whose breast expands with generous warmth, 
A stranger's woes to feel, 
And bleeds in pity o'er the wound 
He wants the power to heal. 

"To gentle offices of love 
His feet are never slow: 
He views, through mercy's melting eye, 
A brother in a foe." 

This bountiful and self-denying charity is 
one of the cardinal elements in the genuine 
Christian life; and the man who does not 
possess it and practise it has no reason to 
call himself a Christian. No matter how 
[i8] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

honest he may be; if he lives all for himself; 
if, with ability to help and comfort and 
bless his fellow men, he does nothing or 
next to nothing for their welfare, and does 
what he does surlily and grudgingly, finding 
no pleasure in ministering to the woes and 
brightening the lives of his fellow men, — 
that mind cannot be in him that was in 
Christ Jesus, nor can he be said to be in any 
true sense a follower of the Man of Nazareth. 
Being a Christian means something more 
than integrity and charity. There are large 
numbers of our fellow men to whom we owe 
something more than strict justice, but who 
do not want our charity. What they need 
is our friendship. All our neighbors need 
that; it is the fundamental, universal human 
need. The employer needs the friendship 
of his employees and the employees need 
the friendship of the employer; without 
this all their relations will be awry; with 
this everything will be harmonious. Be- 
tween tradesman and customer, between 
professional man and client, between neigh- 
bor and neighbor it is the only right relation. 
The relation between friends is not that of 
patron and dependent, or superior and 
inferior; my friend is my equal; I meet him 

[19] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

on the level; I offer him no tips and expect 
from him no servility. 

Jesus Christ was every man's friend. 
The blind beggar on the street and the noble- 
man in the palace were to him just men, 
nothing less, nothing more; he recognized 
the manhood of every man, and all sorts and 
conditions of men drew near to him in 
perect confidence. 

Following Christ means, therefore, the 
filling of all human relations with the spirit 
of friendship.. The man who believes the 
words of Jesus Christ and learns of him 
must be everybody's friend. 

I have been thus explicit in showing you 
what is involved in following Christ, because 
it is important that all who enter upon the 
Christian life do so understandingly. It 
ought to be clear that the Christian life is 
the life of Christ, copied just as fairly as we 
are able to copy it; that it means always 
integrity and benevolence and good-will; and 
that they who are not made upright and 
generous and friendly by their religion are 
not Christians at all. 

These words are spoken in the hope that 
they will, reach the ears of some who, with 
the full knowledge of what is involved in 

[20] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

following Christ, will want to follow him; 
will want to follow him just because the 
paths in which he leads his disciples are the 
paths of integrity and benevolence and 
friendship. They are spoken with the earnest 
expectation that some one who hears them 
will say, ''That is just what I want to be. 
I want to be upright and pure and good. I 
want to ^ cease to do evil,' and to Mearn to do 
well.' There is no comfort in doing wrong. 
I have tried it and I know. Every time I 
am guilty of deceit or impurity or gluttony, 
of any kind of animalism or devilism, I 
feel degraded in my own eyes. I know, too, 
that all that is good within me is weakened 
by every such act of sin, and that if I keep 
on in this way I shall be helpless by and by 
even to choose the better life. Moreover, 
I know that there is happiness in doing right 
and in doing good; for I have found the most 
perfect enjoyment that I ever have known 
in walking in those ways. I want to keep in 
them henceforth and always. I know that 
they are the only right paths for men to 
walk in; and, since they are the paths into 
which Christ leads his own, I want to follow 
him. To stand erect in the right road, 
and go on in it to the end of life; to do that 
[21] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

which is right in the sight of God; to live 
blamelessly and beneficently, conquering sin 
and crowning the lives of my fellows with 
loving-kindness, — this is reward enough in 
itself. I ask no more. I should be ashamed 
of myself if there were not in this thought 
the very highest motive to the Christian life. 
But one who knows tells me that Christ is 
able not only to keep me from falling here, 
but to present me faultless before the presence 
of his Father with exceeding joy. What 
that reward may be, I dare not stop to think 
now; but, if I follow on to know the Lord, I 
shall find out in his good time." 

Believing on Christ, learning of Christ, 
following Christ, — this is what it is to be 
a Christian. You must believe him that 
you may believe on him; you must believe 
on him that you may learn of him; you 
must learn of him that you may follow him. 
But believing is nothing, and learning is 
less than nothing, if they do not result in 
faithful following. 



[22] 



II 



WHY SHOULD I 
BE A CHRISTIAN? 



WHY SHOULD I BE A CHRISTIAN ? 

THAT is a question which I am almost 
ashamed to spend any breath in an- 
swering. To one who lives in a Christian 
land, and who knows, either by travel or 
reading, anything of the lands that are not 
Christian, there would seem to be no need 
of stating the reasons for being a Christian. 
But, unfortunately, many of those who have 
been breathing the air of our religion and 
subsisting upon its benefits all their lives 
have become so utterly sophisticated in their 
notions about it that it is necessary to stop 
and argue with them concerning its value 
as a personal possession. 

Certain reasons for beginning the Chris- 
tian life readily suggest themselves to those 
who are in the habit of going to church. 
One is that there are terrible retributions 
for sin in the world to come and that be- 
lieving on Christ is the only way of escaping 
from them. Another is that there is infinite 
blessedness in the world to come and that 
believing on Christ is the only way of gain- 
ing it. Still another reason often urged is 

[25] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

this: that we shall be happier in this world 
if we are engaged in Christ's service. *' You 
had better become a Christian if you want 
to enjoy yourself. I never knew what hap- 
piness was till I experienced religion." 
How often we hear this counsel and testi- 
mony in the prayer-meetings! Living a 
Christian life is by some persons always 
called '^ enjoying religion." Heaven is to 
them preeminently *^a land of pure delight" 
(if the hymn read ^'mere delight," it would 
express their view about as clearly); and 
the life that leads to heaven gives some fore- 
taste of the immortal joy. 

"The hill of Zion yields 

A thousand sacred sweets 
Before we reach the heavenly fields, 
Or walk the golden streets." 

The promise of entering into this joy, on 
earth as well as in heaven, is, with some 
persons, the strongest reason for beginning 
the Christian life. 

These three motives — the fear of hell, 
the desire of enjoyment in this life, and the 
hope of blessedness in the life to come — are 
often urged upon you; and I have no wish 
to ignore them or to belittle them. That 
sin does entail terrible wo upon those who 

[26] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

continue in It, is a truth of which I have 
no doubt. That Christ does dehver those 
who trust in him from eternal suffering, I 
fully believe. That they who follow Christ 
will not only reach at length a land of pure 
delight, but that they will find enjoyment 
all along the way, I am very sure. I do 
not dwell upon these considerations, because 
you are already familiar with them, and 
because there are other motives higher and 
deeper and mightier than these, which are 
not so often urged, and upon which the 
emphasis of our exhortations ought always 
to be put. 

But you may wonder whether it Is pos- 
sible that any higher or worthier motives 
could be presented to your minds, when we 
urge you to accept of salvation through 
Christ. ^'Can there be a worse evil," you 
ask, "than an eternity of suffering.^ Can 
there be a greater good than an eternity of 
joy?" 

To all of which I answer, Yes, there is 
a worse evil than eternal suffering; there 
is a greater good than eternal enjoyment. 
A million years of suffering is less to be 
dreaded than one year of sinning. An eter- 
nity of enjoyment is less to be craved than 

[27] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

a mortal lifetime of fidelity and service. 
Not suffering, but sin, is the primal evil in 
this universe. Suffering is the consequence 
of sin; but the cause is worse than the 
consequence. Suffering may be honorable: 
sin can never be otherwise than shameful 
and detestable. 

Not enjoyment, but rectitude, is the chief 
good, both in this life and in the life which 
is to come. Enjoyment flows from recti- 
tude; but the fountain is higher and purer 
than the stream. Enjoyment is often an 
end unworthy to be sought. Rectitude is 
always to be desired above all things. 

The reason for being a Christian which 
ought, then, to have the most weight with 
every human being is this: that Christ 
promises to help those who trust in him 
and follow him, in overcoming sin, and in 
winning virtue. That, indeed, is the very 
thing that he came into this world to do. 
Many of the consequences of sin we must 
suffer so long as we remain in this world; 
but from sin itself he is ready to make us 
free if we will only believe on him. If 
deliverance from suffering had been the 
main reason of his coming, he would have 
provided a way of escape from that in this 

[28] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

life, instead of which he often employs the 
discipline of suffering as a means of purify- 
ing us from sin; exactly reversing our own 
inclination, which leads us to commit sin in 
order to relieve ourselves from suffering. 
Does not this show us which of these evils 
he regards as the greater? 

While, therefore, it is my duty to tell you 
that sin and pain always go together, that 
endless sin must mean endless misery, and 
that the way of holiness is the way of happi- 
ness, it is also my business to show you — 
and I know that your consciences are on my 
side when I say it — that, if sin brought no 
pain with it, it ought above all things to be 
hated; that, if holiness brought no happiness 
with it, it ought before all things to be 
craved. 

Is it not so? Think of the evil with 
which your own life is infested. Your sins 
are not all alike: some of you are beset and 
crippled by one form of wrong-doing, and 
some by another; but the long catalogue of 
evil practises contains more than one kind 
of iniquity to which you will sorrowfully 
confess that you are more or less addicted. 

Perhaps you are the bond-slave of appetite 
and your spirit is often dragged in the mire 

[29] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

of sensual indulgence, and soiled almost 
beyond hope of cleansing. And, when you 
think of these excesses into which your 
bodily cravings have sometimes led you, 
are you not filled with a nameless horror, 
a deep and bitter shame? Saying nothing 
about the punishment threatened against 
those who defile their bodies that were 
made to be temples of the living God, is 
not the sin that •: merits the punishment 
something unspeakably heinous? And it is 
you who ought to be wearing the white 
robes of purity and honor; you who are not 
a brother of the beasts, but one of the sons 
of God; you who have all your life been 
instructed in purity and temperance, and 
pointed to the shining way in which God 
leads his own, — it is you who are suff'ering 
yourself to be debauched and corrupted by 
these swinish indulgences. Is it not a 
horrible offense, a dreadful degradation? 

It may be that your worst fault is an evil 
temper. You are terribly passionate. On 
slight provocation the baleful fires of anger 
light up your cheeks and flash out of your 
eyes. When the fit is on you, you are sure 
to say and do unjust and injurious things; 
things which you cannot defend in your 

[30] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

cooler moments, but which you are yet too 
proud to confess. Or, it may be that your 
temper is sullen rather than fiery, and that 
you often wrong yourself, and inflict great 
discomfort upon others, by carrying a surly 
brow and a moody manner into places where 
you ought to be buoyant or cheerful. Or, it 
may be that you are a born tyrant, and that 
you are inclined to make your will the law 
of the little realm of which you are the 
ruler, driving ruthlessly over the rights and 
the preferences of your subjects. It is a 
mean passion, this lust of power; and it 
makes any man feel mean who indulges it. 

It may be that envy or jealousy — twin 
demons — are the evil spirits to which your 
breast often affords a shelter. Like that 
truculent monarch. King Saul, who ^'eyed 
David" because the people applauded his 
courage, who hated him because good men 
loved him, who wanted to kill him because 
he behaved himself wisely and prospered in 
his wise behavior, you often find yourself 
cherishing grudges against your neighbors 
because they are more successful or more 
popular than you are. For their prosperity 
or their good fortune you bear them a 
secret ill-will. If King Saul ever had a sane 

[31] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

moment, he must have despised himself for 
giving way to this detestable spirit. And so 
do you, I think, when you are conscious of 
having harbored the same devil in your own 
heart. 

Or, perhaps you have been guilty of injus- 
tice in your dealings with your neighbors. 
The cursed greed of gain has led you to 
outwit and ensnare them, to overreach them 
in bargaining, to trample on their rights, and 
defraud them of their possessions. You 
have spoiled the innocent and the unwary, 
you have heaped up your own fortune on 
the ruins of other men's estates; you have 
stolen the hearthstones of the poor to build 
the walls of your own houses. You think 
sometimes of the injustice and treachery of 
which you have been guilty; and, while you 
cannot bring yourself to disgorge your gains,, 
you cannot help hating yourself for the 
practise of the bad arts by which you have 
gotten them. 

Or, it may be that you have a habit of 
untruth. Cowardice, or avarice, or love of 
applause often leads you to say the thing 
that is not. You reflect upon these sayings 
afterward; and when conscience rises up 
and says, "That was a lie: you are a liar," 

[32] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

your heart sinks and your flesh creeps in the 
presence of the dread accuser. Oh, it is a 
horrible thing to He, to break the fair bond 
of confidence by which society is held to- 
gether, to turn the very light that is in you 
into darkness ! 

And, what is worse, these sins of unchas- 
tity, of intemperance, of gluttony, of evil 
temper, of tyranny, of envy and jealousy, of 
injustice and extortion, of falsehood and dis- 
honor, or whatever else your besetting faults 
may be, are sins which you commit delib- 
erately and persistently. More than once 
you have yielded to these temptations. 
Against the protest of your consciences, 
against the warnings of God's law, against 
the pleadings of his Spirit, you persevere in 
these sinful practises. You know that you 
are walking in the broad road, yet you keep 
right on in it. These sins come to have a 
horrible fascination over you. Dreadful as 
they are, you do not shake them off. Their 
toils are bound more and more firmly round 
you every day; you yield to them with less 
and less compunction; you find yourself 
drawn down lower and lower by the gravita- 
tion of iniquity. 

Oh, is it not a horrible life to live, — a 

[33] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

miserable condition to be in? From this 
bondage of corruption, from this body of 
death, do you not long to be free? If you 
do not, if falseness and selfishness and beast- 
liness have no horrors for you, if you do 
not feel that these are in themselves more to 
be dreaded, more to be shunned, than any 
amount of suffering could be, then hell is 
the proper place for you, and I see no way 
in which you can be kept from going there. 
Nay, I am not sure that you are not already 
there; for when a man has learned to say, 
^'Evil, be thou my good"; when he has so 
perverted the nature which God gave him 
that he finds his meat in that which ought 
to be his bane, — then the kingdom of hell is 
set up in his heart. The nearer any one 
comes to that condition, the nearer he is to 
the abodes of everlasting wo. 

But I will not believe that any of you 
have reached this lower deep of moral degra- 
dation. I believe that all of you feel the 
terror and the misery of sin, and desire to be 
freed from it. With some of you this feeling 
is more intense than with others, but there 
are few who do not share it. And every one 
who knows what this feeling is can perfectly 
understand the one grand reason for being a 

[34] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

Christian. For it is to this very feeling that 
Christ addresses his gospel. To all who 
labor in these toils of sin, and cannot escape 
from them; to all who are heavy laden with 
iniquity, and are sinking under the load, — 
he comes offering deliverance and salvation. 
^^If we confess our sins, he is faithful and 
just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us 
from all unrighteousness,'^^ Not only to wipe 
off the old score, but to purge the heart from 
the evil desires out of which our trans- 
gressions flow. ''And ye know," urges the 
beloved disciple, ''that he was manifested to 
take away our sins; and in him is no sin." 
It is just what the blessed angel told his 
mother: his name foreshadows his work; he 
is called Jesus, Saviour, because he saves his 
people from their sins. "Yor the grace of 
God that bringeth salvation hath appeared 
to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodli- 
ness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, 
righteously, and godly in this present world; 
looking for that blessed hope and the glori- 
ous appearing of the great God and our 
Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us 
that he might purify unto himself a peculiar 
people, zealous of good works." 

Can any better news than that be told to 

[35] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

any man who knows what an accursed thing 
sin is ? Can any better hope be implanted in 
any human heart than the hope of triumph 
over the inbred evil? Is it possible to offer 
any stronger reason why men should intrust 
themselves to Jesus Christ, and begin to 
follow him, than this: ''Jesus Christ is able 
and willing to deliver you from your sins"? 

To be clean and pure; to have the body in 
perfect subjection, so that no clamorous appe- 
tite should ever drown the voice of reason; 
to be able to keep the temper in perfect 
equipoise, so that no blasts of passion and no 
clouds of suUenness should ever disturb the 
mind's clear sky; to be generous and chari- 
table always, hoping all things, believing all 
things, enduring all things; to be upright 
and honorable; to be true in speech and true 
in act; to be without fear and without re- 
proach, with a conscience void of offense 
before God and men, — oh, what a hope! 
what a promise! what a destiny! But this 
is the goal toward which Jesus Christ is 
leading all those who follow him. Alas, that 
so many should be content to follow him as 
Peter did, a great way off! 

Of some such particular sins and faults as 
I have mentioned, every man's conscience 

[36] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

reproves him. But are not these sins and 
faults symptoms of an organic disease, for 
which a constitutional remedy is needed? 
Is not your bottom trouble, my friend, your 
estrangement from God? Is not this the 
reason of all your sins? You will deny that 
you hate him; but do you not sometimes 
find yourself distrusting him, shrinking away 
from him, banishing from your mind the 
thought of him? Your sins have separated 
you from your God, and your separation 
from God has plunged you into sin. There 
is a terrible reaction here, under which 
every unbelieving soul is driven further and 
further from goodness and from God. And 
sometimes, when you are not thinking of any 
particular sins, the sense of this unfriendliness 
toward God, the consciousness of your own 
unfilial feeling, distresses you beyond meas- 
ure. This, more than anything else, is the 
cause of that strange unrest which often 
troubles you. You never can be quite at 
peace with yourself, my friend, until you are 
at peace with God. And one reason for 
being a Christian is found in the fact that 
God in Christ was and is reconciling men 
unto himself. They who commit their souls 
to him are made partakers of his peace. To 

[37] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

them who are in Christ Jesus there is no con- 
demnation, and there ought to be no feeling 
of condemnation: they are able to say '^Abba, 
Father/' and to draw near to God with con- 
fidence in his forgiving grace. 

What I have said already implies that 
Christ not only offers us the negative good 
of salvation from sin, but also the positive 
good of the enlargement and reenforcement 
of our whole nature. ^'He that hath the 
Son hath life/' new life, fuller life, fresher 
and stronger life. "I am come that ye 
might have life, and that ye might have it 
more abundantly." That is his own testi- 
mony. ''As many as received him, to them 
gave he power to become the sons of God^ 
There is no other gift like that. There is no 
culture that can confer upon a man power 
like that. In delivering us from the bondage 
of corruption he leads us forth into the 
glorious liberty of the sons of God. 

The personal friendship of Jesus Christ is 
in itself a strong reason for being a Christian. 
Suppose that some great and good man, the 
greatest and the best that you can think of, 
should offer you the freedom of his house, 
and kindly urge you to count yourself among 
his chosen friends, and to spend as much of 

[38] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

your time as you could with him; if you 
knew that the offer was sincere, and that 
your acceptance of it would really give him 
pleasure, would you hesitate long in making 
known to him your gratitude for the favor, 
and your purpose to avail yourself as often 
as possible of his hospitality, and his friendly 
offices? Is not the friendship of Christ 
worth more to you than the friendship of any 
man could be ? Is there not more of stimulus, 
more of strength, to be gained by communion 
with him, than any mortal could give you? 
And is there not in the promise of knowing 
him who said to his disciples, ^'Henceforth I 
call you not servants, but friends," one strong 
reason for entering upon the Christian life? 

We are often in perplexity and doubt; and 
Christ gives, to those who trust him, wisdom 
for their daily choices. He is the Light that 
lighteth every man that cometh into the 
world. 

We are often in trouble; and he is the 
Comforter who comes to bind up our broken 
hearts, and wipe away our tears. No sym- 
pathy is so deep as his, no comfort so sweet, 
no support so strong. Are there not reasons 
here that approve themselves to your experi- 
ence? 

[39] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

There is another consideration which 
ought, it seems to me, to have weight with 
some of you. That is the fact that the life 
to which Christ leads those who follow him 
is not only a life of purity and integrity, but 
also a life of heroic service, of self-denying 
love. It is the very noblest life of which it is 
possible for man to conceive. He who pleased 
not himself, but freely gave himself for all; 
he who lived to lighten the burdens and 
soothe the sorrows of men, — is a Master 
whom any man might be glad and proud to 
serve. If your souls do not kindle with ardor 
at the thought of following Him who ''went 
about doing good," and sharing the "joy 
that was set before him" when he entered 
upon his life of sacrifice, I am sorry for you. 

I can speak of but one reason more why 
you should be a Christian; and that is the 
reason of personal gratitude. Surely Christ 
has done something for you. You may not 
be entirely clear what it is; but you know 
that you have been all your life a sharer in 
the blessings that he brought from heaven. 
You know that the whole world is a different 
world to live in to-day from what it would 
have been if Christ had not lived and died. 
You know that your relations to God, your 

[40] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

thoughts of God, your opportunities of 
knowledge and of joy in this life and in the 
life to come, have been greatly changed by 
Christ's suffering love. You know that 
there is no other being in the universe to 
whom you owe so much. Is there not in this 
fact a reason why you should love him and 
serve him.^ So thought that noble Catholic 
missionary, Francis Xavier, whose hymn 
you ought to know: 

"I love thee, my God! but not 

For what I hope thereby; 
Nor yet because who love thee not 

Must die eternally. 
I love thee, O my God! and still 

I ever will love thee. 
Solely because my God thou art, 

Who first hast loved me. 

"For me to lowest depths of wo 

Thou didst thyself abase; 
For me didst bear the cross, the shame, 

And manifold disgrace; 
For me didst suffer pains unknown, 

Blood sweat and agony. 
Yea, death itself, — all, all for me. 

For me, thine enemy. 

"Then, shall I not, Saviour mine! 
Shall I not love thee well? 
Not with the hope of winning heaven, 
Nor of escaping hell; 

[41] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

Not with the hope of earning aught, 

Not seeking a reward: 
But freely, freely as thyself 

Hast loved me, O Lord!" 

Need I mention any more reasons why you 
ought to be a Christian? Let us go back 
over the way by which we have come, and 
mark the steps that have brought us hither: 

Christ is the Redeemer of the world; it is 
to his love that we owe our lives, and all 
our blessings. 

He is the Friend on whose arm we may 
lean in every time of trouble. 

He is the Guide whose unfailing wisdom will 
serve us in moments when the ways are dark. 

He is the Source and Inspiration of all 
worthy and beautiful life. 

He is the Reconciler, who brings us near 
to God. 

He is the Saviour from sin. 

The sin from which he saves us is preparing 
our eternal ruin; and the life to which he 
leads us is crowned with everlasting joy. 

Are there not reasons enough, and strong 
enough, why you should be a Christian.'* 

Now tell me one good reason why you are 
not a Christian. 

You know that there is not one. 

[42] 



Ill 



HOW SHALL I BECOME 
CHRISTIAN? 



HOW SHALL I BECOME A 
CHRISTIAN ? 

ONE who knows what it is to be a 
Christian may be supposed to know 
what he must do to become a Christian. 
Becoming is only beginning to be. Nothing 
can be plainer than that; yet no subject was 
ever more befogged. Almost everybody has 
an impression that one who wishes to become 
a Christian must go through some elaborate 
and mysterious mental process. 

For this confusion our controversial the- 
ology is largely to blame. There has been 
so much dispute about the plan of salvation, 
and the terms of salvation, that many per- 
sons have been greatly troubled to know 
just what salvation is and how it is to be 
obtained. To them it seems to be a bewil- 
dering maze of unintelligible and even con- 
tradictory theories. There appear to be a 
great many steps to take, and there is often 
a degree of uncertainty as to which step 
should be taken first. ^^Must repentance 
precede faith, or faith repentance.^ Should 
I pray before I repent and believe, or must 

[45] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

I repent and believe before I can pray?" 
How often such questions as these are heard! 
Here, for example, is a letter I have just 
received through the post-office: 

"Do you think the Lord ever answers the prayers of a 
sinner? Please tell us what you think about it some evening, 
and oblige An Inquirer.'* 

Now, that is the question of an honest 
mind, I make no doubt; and the answer to 
it may dispel a little of the fog which hangs 
about the entrance to the Christian life. 
Certainly, my unknown friend, the Lord 
does answer the prayers of sinners. If he 
did not, there would be small hope for me. 
Every person who commits sin is a sinner; 
and I never yet knew any person who did 
not commit sin. If God did not answer the 
prayers of sinners, he would answer no 
prayers at all. You want to know, then, 
what is meant by that verse in the Bible 
which says, ^'The prayer of the wicked is 
an abomination to the Lord." That verse 
is not in the Bible. It is one of the devil's 
quotations. Here is what you are trying 
to remember, and you will see that you 
have remembered it very imperfectly: — 
^'He that turneth away his ear from hear- 
ing the law, even his prayer shall be an 

[46] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

abomination." One who wilfully refuses to 
obey God will not be answered when he 
prays. One who deliberately continues in 
the practise of any sin mocks God when 
he prays. But the sincere soul that is con- 
scious of sin, and desires to be free from it, 
is the very one whose prayer the Lord hears 
soonest and answers first. 

But possibly your question means, "Does 
the Lord answer the prayers of one who is 
not a Christian.^" Surely he does; else 
how could the unconverted person become 
a Christian.^ It is in answer to the prayer 
for pardon and help that the grace of God 
is given, by which the Christian life is 
begun. Did you ever read the parable of 
the lost sheep.? Does it not tell you that 
the Son of man is come to seek and save 
them that are lost.? And, if he seeks them 
when they are straying, is it not likely that 
he will answer their call when they seek 
him.? He makes his sun to shine upon the 
evil and the good, and sends his rain upon 
the just and the unjust. Is it likely that 
one who bestows his temporal mercies upon 
sinners as freely as upon saints would bestow 
the better gifts of his grace only upon saints, 
and refuse them to sinners even when they 

[47] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

ask for them? No, my friend: God always 
gives most readily to those who are in the 
greatest need. That is his nature. No 
creature in the universe needs his grace so 
much as the sinner; and, though he never 
forces his love upon those who do not want 
it, the moment that any earnest heart sends 
up to him a cry for help in overcoming sin, 
that moment his help comes down quicker 
than the sunlight leaps from the sky to fill 
the cup of the modest flower that lifts itself 
up toward heaven. 

Do but consider, my friend. Suppose 
that some poor creature who had hitherto 
been living a wretched life should come to 
me, and say, ^'Help me! I want to break 
off my bad habits; I want to lead a purer 
life; I want to find better associates and 
better employment. I want to be a Chris- 
tian if I can." Do you suppose that I 
would turn away from him, saying, ^'No: 
you don't belong to my church; you have 
no claim upon me; I can do nothing for 
you".? Don't you think it a good deal more 
likely that I would make him understand 
very quickly that the work of helping men 
in his condition is the very work above all 
others that I want to do, the very work 

I48] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

which this Church of Christ that I serve is 
organized to do? Could any minister of 
the gospel of Christ reply in any other way? 
And do you not think that Christ himself is 
at least as good as any of his ministers, as 
ready to hear and answer prayer? 

It is very important at the outset that we 
get rid of this strange confusion about the 
prayers of sinners. There is more joy in 
heaven over one sinner that repenteth than 
over ninety and nine just persons who need 
no repentance. It was the publican, and not 
the Pharisee, who went down to his house 
justified. 

The impression prevails that the inquirer 
must pass through some remarkable transi- 
tional experience before he can pray aright, 
and before any of his acts will be acceptable 
to God. Going through that transitional 
experience is what he calls becoming a 
Christian. He does not know what it is, 
but he has some sort of vague notion about 
how he shall feel when he is going through 
it; and, until he feels in that way, he will 
not believe that he is a Christian. As 
nearly as I can find out when I talk with 
these persons, they suppose that, in passing 
from the state of sin to the state of holiness, 

[49] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

they will be as helpless and as ignorant as 
the poor little kitten that is put into a 
basket or a bag, and carried from one town 
to another; and that they will feel very 
much as the kitten feels when it is released 
in its new home, and looks about in a dazed 
way upon scenes which it never saw before. 
Until this mysterious passage is made, no 
act which properly belongs to the Christian 
life can without presumption be performed 
by them. 

No delusion could be worse than this. 
Becoming a Christian is just beginning to be 
a Christian; nothing more, nothing less. 
You become a student by beginning to 
study: there is no other way. You become 
an artist by beginning to draw or to carve. 
You become a machinist by going into a 
machine-shop, and beginning to work at the 
trade of a machinist. And you become a 
Christian by choosing the Christian life, 
and beginning immediately to do the duties 
which belong to it. 

What it is to be a Christian, we have seen 
already. It is to believe on Christ, to learn 
of him, and to follow him. To become a 
Christian is simply to begin doing these 
things. 

[50] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

It IS to commit yourself to his cause, and 
to consecrate yourself to his service at once 
and forever. 

It is to find out, by studying his words, 
what is truth, and what is duty. 

It is to walk right on, then, in the light 
that he gives you, following his example and 
keeping his commandments. 

If anything more than this is included in 
becoming a Christian, I do not know what 
it is. 

There is no ordeal to pass through; there 
is no mysterious process of initiation; there 
is no oracle to visit, no labyrinth to thread, 
no arcanum to discover: all you have to do 
is to ^'commit the keeping of your soul to Him 
in well-doingj^ and, seeking his guidance, to 
follow on in the way he leads. 

Read the New Testament, and learn how 
men became Christians in the days of 
Christ. 

^^And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Gali- 
lee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, 
and Andrew his brother, casting a net into 
the sea; for they were fishers. And he saith 
unto them. Follow me, and I will make you 
fishers of men. And they straightway left 
their nets, and followed him. And going on 

tsi] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

from thence he saw two other brethren, 
James the son of Zebedee, and John his 
brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, 
mending their nets; and he called them. 
And they immediately left the ship and 
their father and followed him." At another 
time "Jesus saw a man named Matthew 
sitting at the receipt of custom, and he saith 
unto him. Follow me. And he arose and 
followed him." 

Here is no elaborate and toilsome process. 
It is the simplest thing in the world. The 
Master calls; the disciple follows. That is 
the beginning and the end of it. 

But some will say: "These men were not 
converted at this time; for the Holy Spirit 
that regenerates the heart was not yet 
given. They were not converted until the 
day of Pentecost." Oh, absurd deduction 
of a machine-made theology! As if any 
man who surrenders himself to Christ as his 
Leader and his Lord were not in that act 
converted! What a preposterous notion it 
is, that these disciples who gave their lives 
to the Saviour, who took his yoke upon them, 
and learned of him, who followed him 
whithersoever he went, and faithfully obeyed 
his orders, were not Christians ! I only wish 

[52] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

that all the members of our churches now- 
adays were just such Christians. If every 
one of you would set about becoming Chris- 
tians in the same way, the number of the 
disciples would multiply very fast. Trust 
me, my friends, when you take Christ for 
your Master and Lord, when your life is 
knit with his by a living faith, the power 
that cleanses the heart and sanctifies the 
soul is not very far from you. 

*' But what about repentance?" somebody 
is asking. ^'Nothing has been said about 
repentance. Is not that one of the things 
to be done in becoming a Christian?" Cer- 
tainly; and the things you have been told 
to do involve repentance. To repent is to 
forsake sin; and that is just what the man 
does who sets out to follow Christ. All the 
sorrow that is required to constitute repent- 
ance is just enough to lead us to forsake 
sin. And no man will ever begin to follow 
the sinless Saviour till he is tired of sin, and 
willing to forsake it. 

^'But is it not necessary," somebody else 
is asking, ^'that some feeling should accom- 
pany this step? Can I start right off in the 
Christian life in this cool and deliberate man- 
ner?" Undoubtedly you can. That was 

[S3] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

the way that James and John and Simon 
and Andrew started. We do not learn that 
they put on sackcloth, and waited in Caper- 
naum, bewailing their sins, and going through 
with a regular course of conviction before 
they followed Christ. There is no account 
of their refusing to stir until some powerful 
impulse seized them, and pushed them on 
in the way by which Christ had gone. 
^' Straightway," when Jesus called them, 
*'they left their nets, and followed him." 
You know a great deal more about him 
than they knew then. You need his wisdom 
and grace at least as much as they did; 
and there is no reason why you should not 
respond just as promptly as they did. 

When any duty is to be done, it is fortu- 
nate for you if you feel like doing it; but, if 
you do not feel like it, that is no reason for 
not doing it. Suppose that a note of yours 
is due to-morrow at the bank; and a friend 
who happens to know it, and who thinks 
that you have forgotten about it, hurries in 
just before the close of banking hours to 
remind you of it; to whom you reply, ^'Oh, 
yes: I know it; and I suppose I ought to go 
down and pay it. The money is here in my 
safe and I have been thinking of it all day; 

[54] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

but, for some reason, I don't feel moved to 
do it at all. I know it will injure my credit 
very much to have the note protested; 
and I suppose that I ought to feel deeply 
anxious about it; but somehow I don't. Do 
you think it would be right for me, feeling 
as I do, to go down to the bank, and pay the 
note?" What would your friend think if 
he heard you talk in that way.? Yet that 
is exactly the way in which some of you do 
talk about an obligation which is certainly 
not less plain and not less urgent. 

Some one rings your bell, and tells you 
that a man has fainted upon your door-step, 
and is lying there in the cold in danger of 
perishing. ^^Ah, yes," you say: ^'poor fel- 
low! I saw him lying there half an hour 
ago. He ought to be taken care of, doubt- 
less; and, if I only felt moved to do it, I 
would bring him in, and try to resuscitate 
him. But I find no such impulse in my 
heart; and it would surely be hypocrisy for 
me to manifest an interest in him which I do 
not feel." 

How would the plea of a want of feeling 
serve in a case like that.'^ Believe me, my 
friend, it serves no better to excuse your 
hesitation in beginning the Christian life. 

[55] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

Lack of inclination, want of impulse, is a 
poor apology for failure in the performance 
of plain duty. If you know that sin is dis- 
graceful and ruinous; if you believe that 
Christ is able and ready to save you from 
sin, then the plea that you do not feel like 
availing yourself of his aid is both silly and 
shameful. 

Sometimes the fact that a person feels dis- 
inclined to a course of conduct is the very 
reason why he ought to enter upon it. One 
who has taken an overdose of opium does 
not feel like keeping his body in active 
exercise. Yet that is just what he must do 
to save his life. If he is permitted to lie 
down and go to sleep, he will never awaken. 
Perhaps you may be in a similar condition. 

^'But this account of what must be done 
to become a Christian is very different," you 
say, ^'from the accounts that I have often 
heard. The experiences of many Christians, 
as they have been related in my hearing, 
show that they have passed into the service 
of Christ through long and painful conflicts, 
through agonies of contrition, through gulfs 
of dark despair." That is true, but it does 
not follow that their experience was one 
that anybody ought to imitate. If they 

[561 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

were so headstrong that they struggled long 
before they would submit to the Master's 
yoke, if they were so proud that they could 
not without a painful strife surrender their 
souls to his keeping, that is no reason why 
you, too, should be proud and headstrong. 

When I was a farmer's boy, I remember 
once, on a stormy night, trying to get the 
sheep of which I had the care into a safe 
shelter. Most of them seemed ready enough 
to go in, but there was one who would not. 
I tried to call him in; but he stood outside 
stamping his feet and shaking his head in a 
very defiant fashion. I tried to drive him 
in; but he would turn suddenly from the 
narrow entrance, and leap past me, and then 
stand at a little distance, and bleat, as if he 
were a deeply injured animal. At last, by 
masterly strategy, I succeeded in getting 
him in, and fastening the door behind him. 
Once in, he seemed to enjoy the fold as 
much as any other member of the flock. 
But I presume that, if you could have got 
him to relate his experience, he would have 
told you that it was a terrible thing to go 
into a sheepfold, that it was only accom- 
plished after many struggles and doubts and 
fears. 

[571 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

There are a great many sheep in Christ's 
fold who have had much the same sort of a 
time in getting in, and some of them think 
that their way is the only right way of 
entering. I do not think so. It is not be- 
coming, when Christ's call is heard, for any 
of us to devote our time to fruitless lamenta- 
tions over our past misdeeds, or to any 
scenic exhibitions of our own perverseness. 
The only thing for us to do is to arise and 
follow. We shall most clearly show our 
sorrow for past neglect by prompt obedience 
and faithful living in the present. 

These sentimental struggles of the soul 
before conversion are frequently of the 
nature of penances. They often grow out 
of the idea that suffering is a good thing in 
itself, that God is pleased to see us torture 
ourselves awhile before he consents to for- 
give us. The Roman Catholic Bible reads, 
''Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven is 
at hand." Our Bible says, ''Repent ye, for 
the kingdom of heaven is at hand." The 
two commands are utterly unlike. Doing 
penance is using your sins as scourges with 
which to lacerate yourself. Repenting is 
turning away from your sins and forsaking 
them. That is what the man does who, like 

[58] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

Matthew or the Ethiopian eunuch, instantly 
surrenders himself to the call of Christ. 
That is not what the man does who waits, 
before obeying the call, to put himself 
through an ordeal of contrition. He does 
penance, but he does not repent. 

No. There are no long stages of prepara- 
tion through which you must pass; all things 
are now ready; there is nothing to hinder 
you from becoming a Christian this very 
hour. And, if any of you have been trying 
to make yourselves better until you are weary 
and discouraged in the work, all you have to 
do is to put it into stronger hands. By this 
I do not mean that you shall abandon the 
work of trying to do right, but that you shall 
give the direction of it to a Master work- 
man, and you yourself become his industrious 
and faithful servant. 

One day, in the city of New York, as I 
was walking up Third Avenue, I saw a 
little boy standing near the Bible House, by 
the side of a huge bundle of stationer's 
stores. He had been tugging it for some 
distance, and he was pretty well tired out. 
As I approached him, he looked up into my 
face, and said modestly, ^'Please, sir, can 
you tell me how I could get this bundle up to 

[59] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

Twenty-first Street?" It was an appeal 
that I could not refuse; so, thrusting my 
walking-stick through the cords of the pack- 
age, and giving him the longer end of it, we 
lifted the bundle, and trudged on together 
till we reached the stationer's shop. 

Now there were several other things that 
little boy might have done. He might have 
gone away and left his bundle in the street; 
that would have been unfaithfulness to the 
trust reposed in him. He might have asked 
me to help him carry it a block or two; 
then he would have been but a little better 
off. He might have asked me to help him, 
insisting that I should give him the entire 
management of the job: if he had, I pre- 
sume I should have been disinclined to help 
him. Or he might have requested me to 
carry it for him, refusing to lend a hand him- 
self: then I should surely have left him to 
get it home the best way he could. But 
what he did do seemed to me the most sensi- 
ble thing that such a little boy with such a 
big bundle, so far from home, could have 
done; and the grateful ^^ Thank you, sir," 
with which he parted from me at the door of 
his shop, amply paid me for my labor and 
delay. 

[60] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

Now, it seems to me, my friends, that 
some of you are in that little boy's condi- 
tion. You have a heavy load to carry, and 
you are a long way from home. You have 
a charge to keep, a labor to perform, which 
often seems too hard for you. To live 
purely and blamelessly, to subdue your 
appetites and passions, — this is your task. 
To carry with an even hand the heavy obli- 
gations of life up the narrow way of recti- 
tude, — this is your burden. You have 
become pretty thoroughly convinced that 
you can never bear it alone. But what will 
you do.f^ Will you abandon your burden in 
despair.'* All you have, that is worth sav- 
ing, is bound in it. A Wayfaring Man is 
passing by. Perhaps he will help you. 
Among all the throngs of passengers, he is 
the only one whose eye is cast upon you. 
Will you speak to him.^* What will you say 
to him.'* Will you ask him to help you 
carry it a little way.^ That is what many 
people are inclined to do. They are willing 
to have a little temporary help from Christ; 
but they are not willing to take his yoke 
upon them with a pledge to bear it while 
they live. This casual grace, if you could 
obtain it, is not what you want. 
[6i] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

Will you ask him to help you, but insist 
on having all the control of the work your- 
self? Which is the wiser, — you or he? 

Will you ask him to carry it for you, and 
then yourself refuse to do what he bids you? 
That prayer he will not hear. He helps 
those who help themselves, — none others. 
The burden of guilt, of anxiety, of fear, — 
that he will carry for you, the whole of it. 
His forgiveness will be so prompt and free 
that it will lift that load in a moment from 
your heart. But there will still be duties to 
do, and responsibilities to bear, of which you 
must not expect to be relieved. Christ did 
not come to deliver you from labor: he came 
to help you in the performance of labors that 
were too heavy for you. His grace supple- 
ments, it does not supplant, your own activ- 
ity. When you hear the sound of a going 
in the tops of the mulberry-trees, you are 
not to lie down in the shade: you are to 
bestir yourself. 

Will you, then, do just what the little boy 
did, — ask him humbly to help you, making 
no conditions or suggestions or reservations 
whatever? Will you tell him frankly that 
you cannot carry your load, and that you 
need help? Will you suffer him to help 

[62] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

you In his own way, and be glad and thank- 
ful if he will only take you under his care, 
and direct the whole course of your life for 
you? 

That, my friends, is the only right way, 
the only sensible way. The wayfaring man, 
Christ Jesus, has helped many and many a 
tired traveler home with burdens quite as 
heavy as yours. Often and often he goes up 
and down this thoroughfare of life in search 
of just such overladen pilgrims; and his 
voice is sounding forth above all the babble 
of the busy tongues and the clatter of the 
busy wheels, saying, — 

^'Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 

*'Take my yoke upon you, and learn of 
me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and 
ye shall find rest unto your souls. 

*'For my yoke is easy, and my burden is 
light/^ 



[63] 



IV 



HOW SHALL I KNOW 
WHETHER I AM A 
CHRISTIAN OR NOT? 



HOW SHALL I KNOW WHETHER I 
AM A CHRISTIAN OR NOT? 

FOR many good people this is a hard 
question. Within the churches are a 
multitude of sincere souls whose deepest 
thought finds expression in John Newton's 
homely quatrain, — 

" 'Tis a point I long to know, 
Oft it causes anxious thought: 
Do I love the Lord, or no ? 
Am I his, or am I not ? " 

This uncertainty greatly distresses them. 
They fear that they are in a false position, 
and they are continually searching their 
own lives for evidences that they are true 
children of God. 

Outside the churches are many in the 
same perplexity. They have tried to become 
Christians, but they are not at all sure that 
they have succeeded. If they should be 
asked whether they are Christians or not, 
they would probably answer in the negative; 
yet they feel certain that they have done 
everything that they can do to secure the 
forgiveness of their sins, and the favor of 

[67] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

their heavenly Father; and they do not see 
why they are not accepted of him. 

I have no doubt that many of these are 
Christians. In all our congregations, and in 
many of our Christian families, are persons 
who are true disciples and followers of 
Christ, but who have never been able to 
reach this assurance because they have 
always been looking for it in wrong places. 
They are defrauding themselves of a good 
hope. They are shutting themselves, by 
this distrust, out of joy which belongs to 
them, and out of work which they ought to be 
doing. I wish that I might make the matter 
so plain to them that they would enter at 
once into their duty and their reward. 

Is this question necessarily a difficult 
one.'^ Must the answer to it be involved 
in obscurity.^ It does not seem to us, 
when we begin to think about it, that it 
ought to be. If God calls men into his 
service, and tells them that their well-being 
in this life and in the life to come depends 
upon their heeding his call, it is surely not 
reasonable to suppose that he would make 
it difficult for them to know whether they 
have obeyed it or not. Suppose that an 
epidemic is destroying the lives of hundreds 
[68] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

of people, and that a physician discovers 
a sure preventive. In itself it is something 
very simple; but his prescription which he 
gives to the public is so abstruse and com- 
plicated in its phraseology that nobody can 
be clear whether he has followed it or not. 
Consequently, all those who have attempted 
to protect themselves against the disease 
are left with the distressing apprehension 
that they may have made some mistake 
about it. Now, we should say that a physi- 
cian who confused a matter of this sort was 
a cruel bungler if he did it carelessly, and a 
monster of malice if he did it purposely. 
One-half of the benefit of such a prophy- 
lactic, we should say, is in the sense of security 
which it gives to the minds of those who 
resort to it. The value of a course of treat- 
ment which is so uncertainly prescribed that 
no one can be sure whether he is following 
it, or not, would be very doubtful. 

Now, the Great Physician has published a 
remedy for the plague of sin, — remedy and 
preventive in one; and can we suppose that 
he is either so careless, or so cruel, as to 
make it impossible for us to determine 
whether we have succeeded in applying it? 
That is quite incredible. It must be that 

[69] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

those who strive to follow Christ may have a 
reasonable assurance that they are walking 
in the right way. 

The Christian life is sometimes represented 
as a vocation or calling. It is not difficult 
for an individual to know whether or not he 
has entered upon any other calling. Some, 
indeed, there are, who have no definite occu- 
pation; but if a man has chosen a life-work, 
and devoted himself to it, he generally 
knows it. Ask him what his business is, and 
he will answer promptly enough, ^'I am a 
carpenter," or, ''I am a lawyer," or, *'I am a 
druggist," or, ^^I am a machinist," as the 
case may be. The carpenter does not say to 
you, in a sad, uncertain tone of voice, *'I 
don't know: I have been trying for five, or 
ten, or forty years, to be a carpenter, and 
I have sometimes hoped that I was one; 
indeed, there have been seasons when I felt 
quite sure of it; but I am often in great 
doubt." He may say, indeed, ^'I am not so 
good a carpenter as I might be; I have seen 
nicer workmen; but I can do a pretty fair 
job, and I am not ashamed of my trade. It 
is one that I freely chose, and that I have 
done my best to learn; and I shall work at 
it as long as I live, if I can find employ- 

[70] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

ment." Surely there is nothing presump- 
tuous in saying as much as that. A man 
who did not have his mind made up about 
such a matter, and who did not know his own 
mind, would never accomplish much in this 
world. 

And, if he were only an apprentice, he 
might confidently say, ''I am going to be a 
carpenter if I live. I have chosen that as 
my life-work, and am learning it as fast as I 
can. I shall know the business better by 
and by, but I am working at it now every 
day." 

Why is it not possible for those who have 
chosen the Christian vocation, and have 
devoted their lives to it, to know that they 
have done so? 

The Christian life is sometimes repre- 
sented as citizenship in a kingdom, or as 
loyalty to a government. Every one of us 
knows whether he is a loyal citizen of the 
United States or not. During the late war 
this question came home to us in a very 
pointed way more than once; and we had 
no difficulty in answering it. We knew 
then whether we loved our country or not, 
and we know now. If any one should ask 
you, in your journeyings abroad, what your 

[71] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

nationality was, what would your answer 
be? Would you say, ^'Really, I am not 
quite sure. I have lived in the United 
States all my life, and have voted and paid 
taxes there, and have sometimes hoped that 
I might be considered a citizen of that 
country; but I am troubled with a good 
many doubts about it?'^ Or would you 
simply say, ^'I am an American," and mean 
to cover by that claim not only your birth- 
right citizenship but also the free and loyal 
love that binds you to your native land? 

Why should you not be just as sure that 
you are loyal to Christ's kingdom as that 
you are loyal to the government of your 
country? 

The Christian life is, as we have seen, not 
only allegiance to a government, but devo- 
tion to a person. It begins with a surrender 
of the soul, in an entire and unfaltering trust, 
to Jesus Christ the Saviour. Love to him, 
faith in him, union with him, are its constant 
inspiration. Now, it is not difficult for any 
of us to tell whether or not we are cherish- 
ing a personal affection for those who are 
nearest us in this world. The dutiful child 
is in no doubt as to whether he loves his 
mother, or not. The parent does not need to 

[72] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

stop and search his heart to see whether he 
can find any traces of affection for his child. 
Your chosen friend, your most intimate com- 
panion, — you know what your feelings are 
toward him. Why should there be any 
more uncertainty in your mind concerning 
your love for Christ? You have not seen 
him, but you may communicate with him 
every day and every hour. The bodily form 
in which he appeared to men is not with us, 
but ^'we have the mind of Christ." His 
thoughts are not only recorded for us in the 
New Testament, but they are given us by 
direct inspiration, whenever we open our 
minds to receive them. His love was not 
only manifested to us on the cross, but it 
is revealed to us every day in care the most 
constant, help the most loving, comfort the 
most sweet and precious. The fact that we 
cannot see him is no reason why we should 
not know him. Very likely there are per- 
sons in this world, whom you have never 
seen, for whom you have conceived a strong 
affection. You have been in communica- 
tion with them; their thoughts and feelings 
have been made known to you; and, though 
you have not seen their faces or touched 
their hands, you know their minds; and all 

[73] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

love that is genuine has a great deal more 
to do with the mind than with the face 
or the hands. Now, communication with 
Christ is much more direct, and may be 
much more constant, than with any earthly 
friend, far or near; and there is no reason 
why our affection for him should not con- 
stantly deepen and strengthen, no reason 
why we should not be quite as sure that we 
love him as that we love any other friend. 
For the faculties of the soul which are called 
into exercise in loving him are the same 
faculties which we exercise when we love 
our children or our parents or our compan- 
ions; and there is no more mystery in their 
use in the one case than in the other. 

The Christian life may also be considered 
as a hungering and thirsting for righteous- 
ness. This, as we have seen, is the principle 
from which it starts, and the goal toward 
which it travels. You go to Christ because 
you hate sin, and desire to overcome it. 
You follow Christ because he promises to 
enable you to make his righteousness your 
own. Now, you know, of a certainty, 
whether or not this is your purpose. You 
know whether you have set before yourself 
righteousness, rather than happiness, as 

[74] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

your being's end and aim. If this is the 
ruling motive of your life; if you want to be 
pure and true and good more than you want 
anything else, and if by Christ's grace you 
mean to be, then you are a Christian. And 
there is no more difficulty in your knowing 
that this is your purpose than in knowing 
that you have decided to buy a house, or to 
make a journey, or to study a profession. 

Now, take these illustrations, and apply 
them to your own cases. 

1. Have you chosen the service of Christ 
as your high calling, your life-work, with 
an honest intention of continuing in it, by 
his grace, as long as you shall live.^ 

2. Are you loyal to his government.^ Is 
he the Lord of your life, the sovereign of 
your heart .^ Is it your sincere endeavor to 
seek first his kingdom.^ 

3. Are you bound to him as to a friend, 
by a strong personal affection.^ 

4. Are you striving with all your might 
to follow him in the way of righteousness ? 

If you are genuine disciples of Christ, I 
know that you will answer all of these 
questions promptly, unless it be the third 
one. Some of us may be able to respond 
to that with equal promptness. Doubtless 

[75] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

all of us ought to be. But there are many 
Christians who hesitate when they are asked 
whether they are conscious of a personal 
affection for Christ. They know that they 
honor him, that they are grateful to him, 
and that they are trying to do his will; but 
they cannot speak, as some do, of that glow- 
ing love which unites the soul with Christ 
in a sweet consciousness of fellowship. 
This experience is one to which Christians 
do not always attain at the beginning of 
their course, but it is not beyond the reach 
of any of us; and a faithful following of 
Christ ought to lead us into it. Some per- 
sons are naturally more trustful than others, 
make friends more readily, respond more 
quickly to overtures of affection. Such 
natures will more easily establish this per- 
sonal relation with Christ, and will enter 
into a feeling of union with him more speedily, 
though they may be no more devout and 
no more devoted than some who cannot 
speak with confidence of any such expe- 
rience. 

But even though in this respect your evi- 
dence that you are a Christian may not be 
so clear as you could wish, if you can answer 
the other three questions in the affirmative, 

[ye] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

you ought to know that you are a Christian. 
If you know that you have consecrated your 
life to the service of Christ, that you are 
loyal to his kingdom in purpose and in deed, 
and that you are endeavoring by his grace to 
walk in the way of righteousness, then you 
have no right to doubt that you are a Chris- 
tian. For, if you know that these things are 
true of you, God knows it too, does he not? 
And, if he knows that such are your sincere 
desires and your honest endeavors, then, 
although you may make a great many mis- 
takes, and may often fail of realizing your 
purposes, he will be patient and pitiful in 
his treatment of you; and he assures us 
that those whose hearts are turned toward 
him with such earnest purpose he will in no 
wise cast out. 

When you know that you have done^ so far 
as you cany what is necessary in order to become 
a Christian^ then you ought to know that you 
are a Christian. 

''God is not a man, that he should lie.'' 
He says to you, ''Seek, and ye shall find." 
When, therefore, you know that you have 
earnestly sought, you know, if his word is 
true, that you have also found. To entertain 
any doubt of it is to make him a liar. 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

Though you may not have any evidence in 
your feelings that he accepts you as his 
child, you have his word for it; and you 
ought to have a great deal more confidence 
in his word than in the report of your own 
emotions. ' . 

^'AU this may be true," says some one; 
*'but how can I be sure that I have earnestly 
sought him? May I not be deceived right 
here? May I not think that I am in earnest 
when I am not?" 

No. I do not think that any one is ever 
deceived in this matter who does not want to 
be. You are dealing with a Being of perfect 
truth; and he would not suffer you to be 
innocently misled to your own ruin. If you 
are a deliberate hypocrite, then doubtless 
in deceiving others you may succeed in 
deceiving yourself; but, if you want to know 
the truth about your own spiritual condition, 
God's Spirit will reveal it to you. You are 
not self-deceived unless you are a wilful and 
conscienceless deceiver of others. And, if 
you honestly think that you have done what 
you could to become a Christian, you have no 
right to doubt that you are a Christian. 

Every one of us may know what is the 
ruling purpose of his life; and he who knows 

[78] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

that his ruling purpose is to trust and follow 
Christ knows that he is a Christian. 

But there is another kind of evidence that 
is still more clear and satisfactory: that is the 
evidence which is furnished by the course of 
our own experience. By this, I do not mean 
the revelation which is made in conscious- 
ness. There are those who speak of an 
inner light, — a feeling of assurance, which 
is so strong that they rest their faith upon 
it. This is what Paul means, I suppose, by 
the witness of the Spirit; and those who 
have received it ought to be thankful for it. 
But there are Christians who cannot speak 
with confidence of any such evidence as this, 
who yet feel that they have in their own 
experience the most conclusive proofs that 
they are the children of God. Their con- 
fidence is not in any revelations which have 
been made to them, not in any light which 
they have seen, not in any ecstasy which they 
have felt. The ground of their hope is 
something much more commonplace and 
much more stable. It is the whole history 
of their Christian lives. 

They have been faithfully trying for years 
to reduce their religion to practise; and the 
proofs that their religion is true and real 

[79] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

have been multiplying and strengthening the 
longer they have lived. They have asked 
again and again for spiritual gifts from God, 
and have received what they asked for. 
They have been struggling against their 
faults and failings, trusting in the divine aid; 
and in this conflict they are sure that the 
help of the Omnipotent has been freely given 
to them. Vices and weaknesses which they 
never could overcome In their own strength, 
they have conquered by the grace of God. 
They can connect their prayers with these 
moral victories as closely as they can con- 
nect any other cause with its effects. 

So, too, in the work they have undertaken 
for others, it seems to them certain that they 
have had the help of the Master again and 
again. Duties from which they shrunk have 
been made easy; burdens which they thought 
would crush them have been wonderfully 
lightened; in the hour when their testi- 
mony was wanted, their tongues have been 
loosened; their timidity has been changed 
to courage, their doubt to confidence, their 
weakness to strength, by trusting in the 
• divine Helper. They have proved God, 
and have found by long experience that 
the promises of his word are verities. 

[80] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

Their realization of the divine aid has 
been at some seasons much less vivid than at 
others. There have, indeed, been periods in 
their lives when they have neglected this 
close connection with the Power unseen; but 
the assurance of his ability to help has been 
exactly proportioned to the constancy and 
earnestness with which they have sought his 
aid. And, looking back over their history, 
they feel that the proof of the reality of the 
Christian life is cumulative, — that it rests 
not wholly upon the assurance of another, 
but largely upon experience; and that it is 
in great measure the kind of proof which 
scientific men insist upon, — an induction of 
facts which have come within their own 
knowledge. 

This is a conviction into which every man 
must make his own way. Every one of us 
must give account for himself unto God, and 
every one of us must find out for himself 
whether God's Word is true. The relig- 
ious experience is wholly individual. It 
is impossible for us to reach and tabulate 
the facts of other men's lives, because it is 
impossible for us to know what the mental 
experiences of other men are. We know 
what takes place in our own minds, but we 
[8i] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

cannot tell what is passing in the minds of 
others. 

It will be observed, too, that this convic- 
tion of the truths of religion is the result 
neither of metaphysics nor of mysticism, but 
that it is produced by a steady and patient 
endeavor to reduce Christianity to life. If 
you want to know the certainty of these 
things, you must put them in practise. If 
you wish to find out whether a machine will 
work, you set it a-going. If you want to 
know whether a coat will fit, you put it on. 
The religion of Christ is a practical religion; 
and the only test which you can apply to it 
is the test of use. If you will take the Master 
at his word, and do his will, you shall know 
of the doctrine; not merely by the shining 
of an inner light, nor by the deductions of 
a halting logic, but by the solid persuasion 
which grows out of a happy and fruitful 
life. 

But some one wants to know whether in 
becoming a Christian one does not experience 
a change of heart, and whether one can 
experience such a change without knowing 
it immediately. ^ ! 

Certainly, I answer: a change of heart 
does take place when one becomes a Chris- 

[82] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

tian. *' Ye must be born again/' the Saviour 
said to Nicodemus; and he who consecrates 
himself to the service of Christ, who learns 
of him and follows him, does experience the 
regenerating grace of God. But I do not 
think that men are always conscious of this 
change when it takes place. All analogy is 
against such a theory. The beginnings of 
life are always small and silent. Were you 
conscious of the beginning of your natural 
life.^ Do you even remember the first mo- 
ment of your consciousness } No. You had 
been breathing, and thinking, and wonder- 
ing, and wishing, and suffering, and taking 
pleasure for weeks and months before any- 
thing happened which you can remember. 
And it is very often that the new life begins 
in just this way. You are conscious of 
your own resolutions, your own struggles, 
your own attempts by faith to lay hold upon 
eternal life; but the operations of the Divine 
Spirit go on in your heart for a long time 
beneath consciousness, and the change that is 
wrought in you is wrought without noise or 
demonstration. 

This phrase, "a change of heart," is one 
over which beginners in the Christian life 
are wont to stumble. It seems to them to 

[83] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

suggest an emotional experience so marked 
and distinct that they shall know when they 
have passed through it; and, since they do 
not have any such experience, they begin to 
doubt whether they have become Christians. 

I knew a young man, more than twenty 
years ago, who found himself in just this 
perplexity. He had been trying for several 
weeks to live a Christian life, doing every 
duty as well as he knew how, and praying 
all the while for light and help; but still he 
failed to experience what he expected; and 
he went to his pastor, and sadly told him 
that there was something wrong. 

^'What is the trouble?" asked the minister. 
^'I thought you were getting on bravely. 
Are you growing weary in your service?" 

^'Oh, no! but I haven't met with a change 
of heart. I thought that I should, if I kept 
trusting Christ, and trying to do his will, 
but I haven't." 

"How do you know that you haven't?" 

"Well, it seems to me that I should have 
known if I had.", 

"Would you? Perhaps not. Let us see. 
You have not experienced a change of heart. 
What is the heart?" 

"The affections, I suppose." 

[84] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

^'Exactly. Now, are you sure that your 
affections have not changed? Did you love 
to read the Bible six weeks ago?'' 

"No." 

"Do you now?" 

"I do." 

"Did you love to pray before that time?" 

"No. I said my prayers generally; but I 
didn't pray much." 

"Do you find pleasure in your prayers now, 
as well as profit?" 

"Oh, yes!" 

"Did you enjoy going to prayer-meeting or 
talking with Christians about religion six 
weeks ago?" 

"Not at all." 

"And you do now?'^ 

"I do, very much." 

"You can think, can you not, of several 
things, that you did find pleasure in not 
long ago, in which you find no pleasure 
now?" 

"Yes, a good many." 

"Well, then," said the minister, "I should 
think that you had met with a great change 
of heart. That which you loved most a 
short time ago you care but little for now; 
that which you cared nothing for then is 
[8s] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

your chief enjoyment now. It seems to me 
that your affections have almost wholly 
changed; and, if by the heart is meant the 
affections, you have certainly experienced 
a change of heart." 

That young man will never cease to be 
grateful to his minister for taking this phrase, 
which had been a barrier before his feet, 
and turning it into a staff to help him on 
his way. It is possible that the report of 
this simple conversation might make the 
way of life plainer for some of you. 



[86] 



¥• 



WHEN SHOULD I JOIN 
THE CHURCH? 



WHEN SHOULD I JOIN THE 
CHURCH ? 

^''T^HAT is not the first question," says 
A somebody. ''The first question is 
whether there is any need of joining the 
Church at all. Cannot one be a Christian 
outside the Church as well as inside.^" 

I have no doubt that one can be a Chris- 
tian without joining the Church. There is 
no salvation in the sacraments, and there is 
no regenerating virtue in religious profes- 
sions. But I do not think that you can be 
so good a Christian outside the Church as 
you can be inside. You are not so good a 
Christian when you are neglecting a plain 
duty as you are when you are performing it. 
And joining the Church is a plain duty for 
all who mean to be Christians. 

Can there be any doubt about this? Do 
not the explicit commands of our Saviour 
put this matter quite beyond the reach of 
question or cavil .^ 

*' Whosoever therefore shall confess me 
before men, him will I confess also before 
my Father which is in heaven; but who- 

[89] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

soever shall deny me before men, him will I 
also deny before my Father which is in 
heaven." 

These are plain words, and they are 
solemn words. It is vain to try to explain 
them away, or to evade their application. 
They mean just what they say; and they 
make it the duty of every one who recog- 
nizes Christ as his Lord and Master to make 
a public profession of his faith in him. 

Does any one doubt that Christ founded a 
Church in the world into which men were 
to be received by baptism? Does any one 
forget that his last word to his followers was 
**Go ye and disciple all nations, baptizing 
them in the name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost?" Telling 
them to baptize everybody is certainly 
equivalent to telling everybody to be bap- 
tized by them. It is no more true that 
God commands all men everywhere to 
repent, than that Christ commands all men 
everywhere to be baptized. ^ ? 

The Lord's Supper is the other sacrament 
of the Church. And the observance of this 
is not only a sacred privilege but a solemn 
duty. ''Do this in remembrance of me." 
It is not only an invitation, it is also a com- 

[90] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

mand. You cannot claim that you are 
obeying him so long as you neglect this clear 
and explicit injunction which was spoken 
by his own lips. 

I said that one could doubtless be a 
Christian without joining the Church; but 
that is only saying that one may be a Chris- 
tian who neglects a plain duty. For there 
are some Christians who are so blinded by 
prejudice or error that they refuse to per- 
form the plainest duties. There can be no 
doubt, for example, that it is the duty of 
every citizen of this government to take part 
in the government, by informing himself 
concerning the issues that are pending, and 
by casting his vote, in every election, for the 
best policy and the best candidates. It is 
not only a political duty, it is a Christian 
duty; for Christ bids us ^^ render to Caesar 
the things that are Caesar's." Moreover, 
Paul tells us that "the powers that be are 
ordained of God," not to bear the sword in 
vain, but to do justice and judgment; and in 
this country the people are "the powers that 
be," the sovereign authority, upon whom the 
responsibilities of government are laid. Yet 
there are Christians who neglect this plain 
duty, and some who even refuse to perform 

[91] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

it, holding themselves entirely aloof from 
politics, because the government is, in their 
view, defective in its form, or because there 
are so many evils in its administration. 
Now, it seems plain, doubtless, to all of us, 
that such conduct as this is not only foolish 
but inexcusable. If the government is not 
what it ought to be, it is every citizen's duty 
to do what he can by voice and vote to make 
it better. A man who neglects this duty 
may be a Christian, but he is not so good a 
Christian as he would be if he performed it. 
The duty of taking part in the govern- 
ment of the State is no more urgent than 
the duty of taking part in the work of the 
Church. Political governments are imper- 
fect and short-lived, and there is no promise 
of the continuance of any of them. 

" Our little systems have their day, — 
They have their day, and cease to be "; 

but the Church endures from generation to 
generation: it is the one kingdom that can- 
not be moved; it is the one instrumentality 
which is divinely ordained and indestruc- 
tible; and the work of God in the world is 
carried on in it and by means of it. In spite 
of all the imperfections and corruptions 
which must attach to anything in which 

[92] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

men are engaged, the Church is manifestly 
under the control of the divine wisdom; it 
is the means which God has chosen for the 
salvation of men. To say, therefore, that 
you are not under obligation to connect 
yourself with it, and to give it your loyal 
support, is to impugn God's wisdom, to say 
that you know a better way of saving the 
world than the way that he has chosen. The 
refusal to enter its ranks, and do what you 
can to increase its victorious strength, is 
unfaithfulness of the same kind as that of 
the citizen who holds himself aloof from all 
political action. 

The reasons urged upon you for joining 
the Church are often reasons which appeal 
to your self-interest. You are told that it 
will help you in living a Christian life; that 
the ordinances and the fellowship of the 
Church give stimulus and strength to those 
who walk in them; that, if you do not thus 
identify yourself with God's people, you will 
be likely to lose your interest in religion, and 
to drift away into utter worldliness. And 
these words are true, beyond a doubt. I 
have seen them proved true a great many 
times. You ought not to lose sight of these 
considerations; but, after all, the strong 

[93 1 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

reason for joining the Church is not that you 
will gain by it, but that it is your duty 
to do it. No command of Christ is more 
express. No duty is further removed from 
the sphere of casuistry. It is a matter con- 
cerning which those who have chosen Christ 
for their master cannot stop to argue. 

If, then, it is a plain duty to join the 
Church, the question which we set out to 
answer is answered already. The time to 
do any plain duty is the present time, or the 
earliest possible time. It is my duty to 
speak the truth. When shall I speak the 
truth .^ Now, every day, continually. It is 
my duty to deal honestly. When.^ When- 
ever I have any dealings. It is my duty to 
make reparation to my neighbor of any 
wrong that I have done him. When.^ Just 
as soon as I am able to do it. Not when I 
feel like it, not when it is convenient to do it; 
but, setting aside all considerations of pleas- 
ure or convenience, just as speedily as I may. 

It is my duty to make a public profession 
of my faith in Christ, and connect myself 
with his Church. When ? At the very first 
opportunity. There is no more warrant for 
delay than there is in the presence of any 
other clear obligation. 

[94] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

When the citizen comes of age, you never 
hear him asking when he shall begin to vote. 
He votes, if he is an intelligent and consci- 
entious man, at the first election, and at 
every succeeding election when it is within 
his power. He begins to exercise the duties 
of citizenship as soon as he becomes a citi- 
zen. He sees to it that his name is enrolled 
on the registry lists, that he may be counted 
among the responsible electors and rulers of 
the land. What would you think of the 
man who neglected this duty because he did 
not feel patriotic or public-spirited enough 
to perform it; who kept waiting, year by 
year, till he should feel that he was a good 
citizen, before he began to do his duty as a 
citizen.'^ Would you not tell him that the 
way to become a good citizen was by per- 
forming, rather than neglecting, the most 
obvious duties of citizenship? 

But this is just the excuse which is given 
for not joining the Church, by many of those 
who confess that they have chosen the ser- 
vice of Christ, and that they are endeavor- 
ing to live as Christians. They are not 
good enough, they say. And you think, do 
you, good friends, that you will become 
better _ Christians by refusing to obey the 

[95] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

express command of Christ? How long do 
you think it will take you, walking in this 
path of disobedience, trampling his most 
positive orders under your feet every day, 
to reach that perfection of character which 
shall fit you for membership in his Church? 

But you are not disobedient, you say, at 
least not consciously and deliberately, to 
any command but this. You are earnestly 
trying to live a Christian life, to overcome 
your sins, and to grow in all the graces of 
the Christian character. This is the only 
duty that you wilfully neglect. 

I am glad to believe that this is true of 
some of you: yet who gave you permission 
to neglect one plain duty? Where did you 
get your dispensation of disobedience in this 
one thing? Does not the Christian law of 
consecration call for the whole heart? Is 
not this keeping back of part of the price 
the very essence of unbelief? Do we not 
read that he who keeps the whole law, and 
yet offends in one point, the same is guilty of 
all? This halting submission, which stops 
just short of full obedience, is not what 
Christ expects of his followers. 

But you protest that your only reason for 
refusing to confess your faith in Christ is 

[96] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

that you are not good enough. If you were 
good enough, there would be no need of con- 
fessing Christ, — no need of Christ at all. 
It is just because you are not good enough 
that Christ says to you, ^'Follow me." He 
came not to call the righteous, but sinners, 
to repentance. It is not the perfect people, 
or the self-satisfied people, whom he wants 
in his Church, but those who have a deep 
sense of their own imperfection, and who 
believe that his strength is made perfect in 
weakness. 

What is more, your expectation that you 
will "grow better in staying away" — 
better in your own sight — is one that will 
not be fulfilled. It is just as true of joining 
the Church as it is of becoming a Christian, 
that, if you tarry till you feel that you are 
better, you will never come at all. 

How many I have known who have tried 
this experiment faithfully, and have found 
out the folly of it! A woman once came to 
me, desiring to unite with the Church. I 
asked her how long she had been a Christian; 
and she told me that she gave herself to the 
service of Christ more than twenty years ago. 

"Have you been faithfully trying to live 
as a Christian all these years .^" I asked. 

[97] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

*^I have," was the answer. 

*'Why, then, have you not before this 
time made a profession of your faith?" 

^'Because I wanted to be better satisfied 
with my reHgious experience," she replied. 
^'I did not feel that I was good enough to 
join the Church; and I wanted to wait till I 
was better." 

^'And do you feel that you are better 
now?" 

"No, I do not" (very positively). ^'1 
am not any better satisfied with myself than 
I was when I began to follow Christ. I see 
my own imperfections quite as clearly as I 
did then. But I have made up my mind 
that it is my duty to confess my faith in the 
Saviour who died for me; and I know that, 
if I wait till I am satisfied with my own con- 
dition, I shall wait forever." 

That is only one of many testimonies to 
the same effect that I have heard from the 
lips of those who had been waiting until 
they were worthy to join the Church. I 
never heard anybody say that he was glad 
that he had waited. I never heard anybody 
express the opinion, at the end of a period 
of waiting, that he was worthier to be a 
church-member than he was when he first 

[98I 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

entered upon the Christian course. I have 
heard almost uniformly, from such persons, 
regrets that the pubHc confession had not 
been more promptly made. 

'^Was it true, then," you ask, "that these 
persons had grown no better through all 
these months and years of waiting.?^ How 
can a person be a Christian, and not improve 
in character.^ Are we not often told that 
that is just what is meant by being a Chris- 
tian.?*" 

To this I answer, that it is not necessary 
to suppose that these persons had made no 
progress at all. They had not advanced as 
rapidly as they ought to have done, because 
one who neglects an obvious duty must, 
by that very neglect, be crippled in the 
Christian race. The thought of his disobe- 
dience is a weight about his neck. But the 
fact is that one is not conscious of progress 
in the Christian life. He may know that 
his prayers are answered; he may be certain 
that he has help from on high in overcoming 
his sins; but he is all the while discovering 
his limitations and his weaknesses; all the 
while finding new battles to fight and new 
heights to climb; and, so far as his own feel- 
ing of worthiness is concerned^ that does not 

[99] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

become any more assured and satisfying as 
the time goes by. His growth in grace, if 
he makes any growth, is accompanied by a 
constant elevation of his standard of Hving. 
His ideals go before him, and they travel as 
fast as he does. You may fix your eyes on 
the brightest constellation in the firmament 
and follow it round the world without com- 
ing any nearer it. No charm is given to 
your fidelity ''to stay the morning star in 
his steep course." The beauty of the rain- 
bow is always just so far in advance of your 
feet. Between what you are and what you 
ought to be, the disparity, so far as your own 
feelings are concerned, is never lessened by 
your continuance in well-doing. When, 
therefore, you wait until you shall feel more 
worthy to be a member of Christ's Church, 
you wait for what, in the nature of the case, 
you can never attain, unless, indeed, you 
become a self-righteous hypocrite. 

But you say that you are delaying because 
you are afraid that if you join the Church 
you may bring discredit upon the cause of 
Christ. Many professors of religion do, by 
their inconsistent lives, put the Church to 
shame. You hear them spoken of as stum- 
bling-blocks; you see that the logic of their 

[lOO] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

lives tends to confute, rather than to con- 
firm, the holy gospel they profess; and you 
do not want to be numbered among them. 
God forbid that you should be! But is 
there any need that you should be? Have 
you not committed your soul to Him who is 
able to keep you from falling, and do you 
not believe that he will do it? Every one 
that is God's faithful servant shall surely be 
holden up, for God is able to make him 
stand. That is his word; do you not believe 
that it is true? If you have intrusted your- 
self to Christ, and are living by faith in 
him; if you have surrendered yourself to 
his service and his guidance and his keep- 
ing, then your distrust of being able to live 
an upright and consistent life is distrust 
of him, not of yourself. It is an accusation 
of unfaithfulness brought against him. It 
is a confession of your doubt either of his 
power, or of his truthfulness. You do not 
wish to admit that you are harboring any 
such doubt as that! 

But consider, pray, whether you are not, 
by refusing or delaying to identify yourself 
with Christ and his Church, doing what you 
can, even now, to bring discredit upon his 
cause. You are saying in effect that his 

[lOl] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

establishment in the world of a visible 
Church was a superfluous work; that the 
world would be just as well off" without the 
Church as with it; that the maintenance of 
its organization is a matter of no impor- 
tance. More than that, you are saying that 
men have a perfect right to pick and choose 
among the commands of Christ; obeying 
such of them as are convenient, and disre- 
garding the rest. ^'Repent, and be bap- 
tized, every one of you," is the divine order. 
^'No," you say; "everybody ought to repent, 
of course; but only those should be baptized 
and join the Church who feel like it. That 
is not a matter of obligation.'' Your lives 
are saying just that. No matter how many 
disclaimers you may put in, that is what 
your actions mean; and it is by your actions 
that you are judged. I see not how you 
could bring discredit upon Christ and his 
gospel more effectually than by this peremp- 
tory refusal to obey his plain command. 

Remember, my friends, that you are 
counted on the one side or on the other. 
"He that is not with me is against me," the 
Master says. If you will not be numbered 
among his friends, you are sure to be num- 
bered among those who are not his friends. 
[102] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

That is a category in which you do not 
desire to be put. ^ 

There are some among you who have long 
been endeavoring in a secret and somewhat 
unsteady fashion to lead a Christian life. 
You are not at all satisfied with the progress 
you have made, and you have a great many 
doubts about yourselves; but you are never- 
theless trying to trust in the Saviour, and to 
follow him. The expectation of being at 
some time in your lives pronounced and 
positive disciples of Christ is one that you 
constantly cherish; nothing could induce 
you to abandon it. Is it not a good time 
now to forsake your concealed and equivocal 
position, and come right to the front? Do 
you not want to make your lives tell deci- 
sively and powerfully on the side of truth 
and goodness from this day onward? And 
is not the cause of Christ in the world the 
cause of truth and goodness? Would not 
the triumph of his gospel be the triumph of 
all that is highest and holiest? Notwith- 
standing the imperfections of the Church, 
and the inconsistencies of its members, all 
of which I see as clearly as you do and 
lament as deeply, are not the best interests 
of all our communities bound up with the 

[ 103 ] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

churches? And, if mischiefs do abound in 
them, is it not therefore the right and manly- 
thing, not to stand apart carping and sneer- 
ing, but to take hold of them vigorously, 
and in the strength of God endeavor to make 
them better? Would you not feel better 
satisfied with yourself if you were giving 
your lives zealously and effectively to this 
highest of all labors ? Are you not conscious 
that you are defrauding yourself of a most 
precious right and privilege when you refuse 
to take an active part in Christ's work? 

Answer these questions, my friends, at the 
bar of your own consciences, and remember 
that you must answer them one day before a 
more august tribunal. For the matter which 
we are considering is not a matter of con- 
venience or expediency: it is a matter of 
duty. By the express command of Him 
whom you call Master, the obligation is laid 
upon you. The obligation will become a 
privilege, as every duty does which he gives 
us to do, if we only take it up cheerfully and 
discharge it faithfully; but it is none the 
less an obligation. And let us beware how 
we seek to evade or to defer so plain a 
duty. 

[104] 



VI 
BUT AND IF 



BUT AND IF 

WHEN we dig down through the 
layers of indifference and hostility 
under which men often keep their con- 
sciences covered from the appeals of God's 
word, we sometimes strike into what may be 
called the butandiferous formation. It is a 
conglomerate of objections and excuses; and, 
like the Pennsylvanian coal measures, it is 
practically inexhaustible. The "buts" and 
the "ifs" which are unearthed by every 
exploration into the consciousness of those 
who refuse to enter upon the religious life 
are as many and as various as the fossils in 
the palaeozoic rocks. We have encountered 
several of them already in the course of 
these conversations; but there are a few 
more left, of which we may well take notice. 
"I should be ready to enter upon the 
Christian life," says one who comes clad in 
the garb of a philosopher, ^'if it did not 
demand of me the abdication of my man- 
hood. You tell me that I must intrust 
myself to Christ; that I must submit to be 

[ 107 1 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

instructed and guided and helped by him; 
that my will must be merged in his. But 
this is what no man must do. No man 
should submit his will to the dictation of any 
power outside of himself. Every man must 
be the arbiter of his own conduct. The 
humility and dependence which the religion 
of Christ enjoins are inconsistent with true 
manhood." 

Your objection is a radical one, my friend 
philosopher, and it is not an uncommon one. 
In one form or another it is often urged. 
Mr. Mill tells us that what we want in this 
world, or at any rate in some parts of it, is 
less of Christian self-denial, and more of 
Pagan self-assertion. Of that part of the 
world which Mr Mill inhabited, this may be 
true; but it does not seem to me to hold 
good of regions hereabout. Yet even here 
there are voices which give forth the same 
sound; and the method of our religion which 
requires the subordination of the heart to a 
Master, of the life to a Ruler, is attacked as 
being unsound and unmanly. 

Nevertheless the necessity of submission 

and dependence is pretty clearly established 

without going to the New Testament to seek 

its foundations. Lordly and self-reliant as 

[io8] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

man is, he is yet constantly compelled to 
submit. Water will run down hill, let him 
will the contrary however stoutly. His 
firmest resolutions and his most vigorous 
endeavors are inadequate to keep the sun 
above the horizon a moment beyond its time 
of setting. The tides will ebb and flow in 
spite of him; the rain and the snow fall 
many times quite against his will; the storm 
drives his ship upon the breakers without 
asking his consent; the thunderbolt shatters 
his dwelling, and he cannot help himself. 
All he can do is to submit. If he does it 
gracefully, so much the better for him: if he 
chafes and struggles, it makes no difference 
whatever with the storms or the tides or the 
currents or the planets. Man is surrounded 
on all sides with barriers which he cannot 
transgress. He may beat his life out against 
them, but he cannot overthrow them. They 
will confine him, and he must yield to them. 
He is obliged not only to submit, but also 
to depend. He must depend upon the sun 
and the showers for his crops; he must depend 
upon the air he breathes for life; he must 
depend upon the laws and forces of nature 
for all his operations. He is all the while 
dependent. 

[ 109 ] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

Now, is it not quite absurd for a creature 
subject to so many limitations, compelled to 
submit to superior power and to depend 
upon superior strength every moment of his 
life, to set himself up and say, ^^I will not 
submit. I will not depend. It is cowardly 
to submit. It is weak and unmanly to 
depend.^" That is a false theory of life 
which rests upon such foundations. 

Before Lord Bacon's day, philosophy had 
been led perpetually in a mad dance after all 
manner of vagaries. The sages had adopted 
just your method, my friend objector. They 
had said, "Man is the lord of creation: it 
belongs to him to lay down the laws of crea- 
tion." So they had been sitting still in their 
libraries, and fashioning elaborate theories of 
natural law, and then going forth to hang 
their theories upon the facts. But somehow 
the theories would never fit the facts. So 
philosophy was, in great part, a wild jumble 
of contradictions with very little certainty 
or coherency. 

But Bacon set out with a different method. 
His maxim was that man is the interpreter, 
rather than the lord, of nature; and he urged 
that we must sit down submissively at her 
feet, and observe her operations and her 
[no] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

processes, from our observation inferring the 
truths of science. The result is that we 
have now certainty and system in science, 
where before all was blank confusion. This 
method of submissive study, substituted for 
the method of proud theorizing, has brought 
order out of chaos, and light out of darkness. 

The right method in philosophy is the 
right method in all departments of life. 
Bacon himself testified that the entrance to 
the temple of philosophy was exactly like 
the entrance to the temple of religion. Each 
is a strait gate, a humble portal. No man 
can go in at either without stooping and 
divesting himself of egotism and haughtiness. 
*' Except ye be converted and become as 
little children ye can in no case enter there- 
in,'' is as true of the one as of the other. 

Therefore, when you tell me, my friend, 
that this humble submission and dependence 
which the religion of Christ requires of you 
is unreasonable and unmanly, I shall answer 
that, in the opinion of the greatest philoso- 
phers of our Anglo-Saxon race, it is the 
highest reason and the noblest manliness. 
The wisest men are always the humblest, the 
most willing to be led by truth, the most 
easy to be entreated. To yield to the 

[III] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

demands of right Is not unmanly. You 
abdicate your manhood, not when you sub- 
mit to the claims of righteousness, but when 
you refuse to do it. And he who submits to 
Christ submits only to truth and right; not 
to an arbitrary and unreasoning ruler, but to 
One whose law is perfect, and whose counsels 
are infallible. 

I hear another objection which goes to 
the foundations of our Christianity. ^' There 
are many sound maxims in Christian ethics," 
says the critic; ^'but the command to love 
our neighbor as ourselves is unreasonable. 
Reason teaches us to take care of ourselves. 
Self-preservation, not self-denial, is the first 
law of nature." 

But answer me, my friend, do you not 
admire most the persons who set that law at 
naught? When you see one man periling 
his life to rescue another, dying to save 
another, is there not something within you 
which cries out in heartiest applause.^ The 
heroes of all patriotic warfare, — the men 
who give their lives for liberty and father- 
land, — do not they disobey that law of self- 
preservation.^ and does not your very soul 
shout acclamations in their praise because 
they disobey it, because they count not their 

[112] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

lives dear unto them, so that they may leave 
their country whole and free to posterity? 
Is there not a voice of your spirits which 
always commends self-sacrifice; which always 
condemns, in no measured cadences, every- 
thing which looks like selfish forgetfulness 
of the welfare of others ? 

^^Ah, yes," you reply, ^^but that is impulse; 
that is not reason. When I sit coolly down 
and reason about it, I reach the conclusion 
that each one has enough to do to attend 
to his own affairs, without troubling himself 
with the necessities of his fellows." 

My friend, these utterances of your spirit 
which you call impulses are simply moral 
intuitions. They are the highest forms of 
reason. If you fall into the habit of disre- 
garding them, or coolly sitting down and 
dissecting them, you inflict a death-wound 
upon your moral nature. When you arrive 
at the condition in which you never do any- 
thing from impulse, you have got about as 
low as you can go. When that voice within 
your heart is silenced, which thunders forth 
its anathemas at meanness and selfish greed, 
and rings out its peals of approbation in the 
presence of heroic self-denial, the very light 
that is in you will be darkness. Logic is 

[113] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

lame; it arrives at its conclusions tardily, 
it often goes by the wrong road, and it 
sometimes gets to the wrong place. But 
this prompter that speaks from your moral 
intuitions, this faculty that, without stop- 
ping to debate, says quickly of an action, 
*'It is right," or *'It is wrong," — this you 
must not doubt. And it is this faculty 
which says instantly, whenever we see this 
law of love to our neighbor obeyed, ^'It is 
right." This law bears the same relation to 
morals that the axioms bear to mathematics. 
I cannot prove by reasoning, though I know 
by reason, that two times two is four. I can- 
not prove by reasoning, but I know by reason, 
that it is right for us to love our neighbors 
as ourselves. All the logic in the world can- 
not convince me, nor you either, my friend, 
that it is not right. 

Another objector declares that the doc- 
trines of our religion are not credible. *'I 
cannot accept the statements you make," 
he says, *' because they are essentially mys- 
terious. There is nothing like them within 
the range of my experience. It is impossible 
for me to verify them; you must not ask 
me to say that I believe anything which I 
cannot verify." 

[1141 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

I know that some truths are revealed in 
the Bible which cannot be explained. They 
are truths which relate to God, to the mode 
of his existence, to the methods by which 
he has made himself known to men. But is 
it not, to begin with, rational to suppose that 
any revelation of God will contain some 
things which will be difficult of compre- 
hension? That the Infinite is, reason clearly 
tells us; what the Infinite is, reason can 
never fully comprehend. Infinite Being is 
too large for our categories; the thought 
cannot reach round it and describe it; all 
attempts to make its substance known to us 
must be tentative and experimental. If 
there was nothing in the Bible about God 
which was not perfectly clear and intelligible, 
if no paths were opened to our thought, 
whose end we could not quickly reach, — it 
would be impossible for us to believe the 
Bible to be a revelation from an Infinite 
Being. The shadows of mystery which lie 
upon its pages are proofs of its divine origin. 

But it is not only in our religion, my 
friend, that you find mysteries. Many 
things, just as hard to comprehend and 
explain, confront you every day in the 
creatures with which both kingdoms of life 

[115] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

are teeming. I can ask you as many hard 
questions about a daisy or an oyster as you 
can ask me about the God of the Bible. 
The mystery of life is absolutely insoluble 
by all your science, — always has been, 
always will be. 

"Flower in the crannied wall, 

I pluck you out of the crannies; 
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand. 
Little flower; but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is." 

You cannot understand the doctrine of 
the incarnation, — how God could become 
man. But you believe, I suppose, that God 
exists, that he is perfect and infinite, and that 
he is the Creator of the heavens and the 
earth. Explain to me, if you can, how an 
infinitely perfect being could ever have 
created anything. Listen to Origen: "If to 
create is agreeable to the divine essence, how 
is it conceivable that what is thus conform- 
able to God's nature should at any time have 
been wanting?" The things that are made 
are not eternal: they once began to be. 
''There was a period, then, during which 
God was not creating anything: an eternity 
had passed before he began to create. But a 
[ii6] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

transition from a state of not-creating to the 
act of creation is inconceivable without a 
change," and God is unchangeable. It is 
beyond the power of man to conceive of the 
creation of the universe by an infinitely 
perfect being. It is not unreasonable, but 
it is inconceivable. There is nothing like it 
in your experience, and of course you cannot 
verify it. The whole subject is environed 
with mysteries and contradictions, yet you 
do not relinquish your belief that the uni- 
verse was created : and you cannot relinquish 
it without running against diificulties equally 
formidable, whether you turn toward atheism 
or pantheism. There are just as many 
inconceivabilities in atheism and in panthe- 
ism as in theism. 

To reject the gospel on account of the 
mysteries which it contains, and yet hold 
fast to other beliefs which are equally mys- 
terious, is a palpable inconsistency. 

You complain that some things are re- 
vealed which you cannot verify. That is 
true. But some things are told you which 
you can verify. There are mysteries in 
theological science, as there are mysteries in 
physiological science; but there are plain 
principles laid down in each of these sciences 

[117] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

which you can test for yourselves. Physi- 
ology says that good bread, if it is eaten, will 
support life. You may not understand all 
the mysteries of digestion and assimilation, 
but you can verify that statement. The 
New Testament says that faith in the Lord 
Jesus Christ will save the soul from sin. 
You may not comprehend all the mysteries 
of the incarnation and the atonement; but 
here is the one truth which concerns you, 
and you can verify it. You can find out, 
of a certainty, whether he is able to deliver 
you from the evil, and to strengthen 
you in righteousness. "It is so," says Mat- 
thew Arnold: "try it, and you will find it 
to be so. Try all the ways to righteousness 
that you can think of, and you will find 
that no way brings you to it except the 
way of Jesus, but that this way does bring 
you to it." This is the test to which our 
religion is always ready to submit. This is 
the test which the Lord himself has ap- 
pointed. He has not promised that the uni- 
verse shall contain no mysteries; he could 
not promise that without taking himself out 
of the universe: but he does promise that if 
we will trust him, and obey him, he will give 
us power to overcome the evil, — power to 
[118] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

become the sons of God. And the man who 
refuses to put that promise to the proof 
most clearly shows that his mind is not in a 
condition to receive any vital truth. 

A host of these objections and excuses 
yet remain, which I must dismiss with only 
a word of argument. 

*^I suppose," says one, *^that these things 
are true; but I cannot realize their truth. 
The whole subject of religion is to me hazy 
and unreal." Of course it is; and it always 
will be until you have applied it to your own 
life. You cannot realize that honey is sweet 
until you have tasted it. *' Taste, and see 
that the Lord is good." You cannot realize 
the luxury of doing good till you have tried 
it. The substance of all realities is in this 
religion of Jesus Christ; but it can be real 
only to those who will do his will. 

*'But, if I am of the number of the elect, 
I shall be saved at any rate; and, if I am not 
of that number, it is no use for me to try to 
save myself." Now, my friend, you either 
believe this doctrine of election, or you don't 
believe it. If you don't believe it, you have 
no right to quote it as an excuse. If you do 
believe it, you believe that God has fore- 
ordained all things, whatsoever comes to 

[1191 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

pass. His decrees determine every other 
department of your life, as well as your relig- 
ious experience. If it is decreed that you 
shall be rich, you will be rich; and, accord- 
ing to your logic, there is no need that you 
should turn over your hand to increase your 
store. If it is decreed that you should build 
a house, or harvest a crop, or make a jour- 
ney, or understand a science, all these things 
will come to pass. You may sit still, and 
fold your hands, and, whatever God has 
appointed for you, you will be sure to get. 
But you do not act on that principle in 
secular matters; and you would say that a 
man who did so was a fool. The practise 
would be just as rational in secular matters 
as it is in religious matters. 

^'But what can mortal man do to secure 
his own salvation?" (I am quoting the 
very words of a question that was addressed 
to me.) Mortal man can do just what God 
bids him do. He can repent and believe. 
He can arise and follow Christ, as Matthew 
did. 

^'I know that I ought to do it; but I can't 

decide." You can decide. ^'Choose ye. . . . 

whom ye will serve." The power of choice 

is yours. The responsibility of choice rests 

[120] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 

upon you, and upon you alone. God can- 
not choose for you. But you can settle the 
question, if you will, this very hour. You 
know that you can. 

"But I want to act deliberately. I do not 
want to take this step rashly.'' Deliber- 
ately! How long have you been deliberat- 
ing on this matter? All of you for many 
mxOnths, most of you for many years. Have 
you not taken time enough to deliberate? 
Let me tell you, my friend, it is not well to 
stop very long to think when a plain duty 
summons you. The sooner you do it, the 
better. Suppose that you have done your 
neighbor a wrong, and you are moved to go 
and confess it and ask his pardon. "But 
wait," you say. "Let me not be rash about 
this. Let me take time to deliberate." So 
you sit down and think it over, and give the 
selfish passions of your soul time to assert 
themselves. You are able, perhaps, in your 
deliberation, to think of some unkindness 
that your neighbor has done you: at any 
rate, you can find flaws enough in his life; 
and very likely you may succeed in getting 
yourself into a frame of mind in which frank 
acknowledgment of the wrong you have 
done him will be altogether impossible. 
[121] 



BEING A CHRISTIAN 



Deliberation upon a deed to which honor and 
magnanimity and all the nobler sentiments 
prompt you is too apt to strangle the im- 
pulse that leads you to do it. It is just such 
a deed as this which you now propose to 
ponder and discuss a little longer. My 
friend, you cannot afford to do it. You have 
hurt yourself already by your deliberation. 
The time to decide is now. 



[122] 



DEC 29 1910 



WilElJ-iLR A MAU-iiM- WILL 
WORK YOU SET IT A-GOING. 
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW 
WHETHER A COAT WILL FIT 
YOU PUT IT ON. THE 
RELIGION OF CHRIST IS A 
PRACTICAL RELIGION AND 
THE ONLY TEST THAT YOU 
CAN APPLY TO IT IS THE 
TEST OF USE 



■■^ 



■)y 



ifro/ 



i aSS THROUGH; THERE IS 
NO ORACLE TO VISIT, NO 
LABYRINTH TO THREAD. NO 
ARCANUM TO DISCOVER; 
M\ ; . : TO DO IS 

OMMIT THE KEEPING 
Oi- YOUR SOUL TO HIM 
IN WELL-DOING." AND TO 

FOLLOW or 

HE -Li 



■iZ 






One copy del to Cat. Div. 



